Golf’s Elite Are Younger Than Ever

If you look at the top of golf’s World Rankings, its apparent that the sport’s elite are hardly grizzled veterans. In fact, they are the youngest ever. And young bucks are a coming seemingly every tournament.

Golf.com’s Mark Broadie has the stats to prove it.

From 1987 until 1996, the average age of the top 100 players in total strokes gained steadily rose from 32.3 years to 36.5 years. In that decade-long stretch, Watson and contemporaries like Greg Norman, Tom Kite and Hale Irwin were playing competitively into their late forties. The average age of the top 100 players remained steady between ’96 and ’04.

Then the youthquake hit. From 2004 through 2017, the average age of the top 100 players plummeted from 36.5 to 33.0 years. This run began with the success enjoyed by young-gun players like Justin Rose, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and, later, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and others.

In ’17, the average age of the top 10 players was just 30.0 years, the youngest top-10 group ever from 1983 to 2017, the era of Shotlink data.