How Golf Has Changed Since Anthony Kim Left

Prior to his comeback earlier this month, Anthony Kim hadn’t played professional golf since May 2012. 

A dozen years is a lengthy stretch of time regardless of context, but this particular dozen-year stretch felt even longer from a golf context. 

We were reminded of that when it came to light that Kim only recently learned how to use a TrackMan, launch monitors that have been ubiquitous in the pro game (and beyond) for many years now. 

It got us thinking about all the ways golf has changed since 2012—because there have been some dramatic shifts in all areas of the game since that time. 

There is no way to capture every part of the evolution, so feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments. 

In no particular order, here is a list of what has changed since 2012. 

Length is a Prerequisite for High-Level Success in the Pro Game

In May 2012, the top 10 players in the world were Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Bubba Watson, Hunter Mahan, Steve Stricker, Tiger Woods, Martin Kaymer, Webb Simpson and Phil Mickelson. 

Only McIlroy, Donald and Simpson are still active regulars playing a full PGA Tour schedule, which is wild. 

There is something else eye-popping in that list—a few of these players were nowhere near the top of the heap when it came to driving distance. Donald, Stricker, Kaymer and Simpson were relatively short off the tee. Mahan wasn’t short but he wasn’t a bomber. 

You could be a star despite not mashing it off the tee. 

That changed during the 2010’s for a variety of reasons. Physical fitness became standard and speed was prioritized to take advantage of more forgiving equipment. 

Now here are the current top 10 players in the world and their average distance off the tee last season: Scottie Scheffler (310), Xander Schauffele (304), Rory McIlroy (326), Jon Rahm (314), Viktor Hovland (308), Ludvig Aberg (317), Collin Morikawa (296), Patrick Cantlay (308), Joaquin Niemann (314) and Wyndham Clark (314). 

Only one player (Morikawa) is below Tour average, which is right around 300 yards. Everyone else is well above that mark. 

There is more to the game than distance—but it’s nearly impossible to be a top 10 player without being well above average. Accuracy off the tee has trended downward in importance as distance has become more critical. 

Kim was relatively long, ranking in the top 20 of driving distance in his prime. In 2007, he was No. 12 on Tour (302.4 yards). That mark would not have made the top 80 on Tour last season. 

If you are interested in learning more about how driving distance has evolved in pro golf, check out my breakdown on the past 44 years of data. 

Money, Money, Money

This one is obvious but it’s still jarring to look at the numbers. 

Last season, Viktor Hovland made $37.1 million on the PGA Tour. Talor Gooch made around $36 million on LIV. 

In 2012, the leading money earner was McIlroy at $8 million. That would have been No. 13 in Tour money last year… if you don’t include massive FedEx Cup payouts… and don’t include the majority of LIV players who would have been ahead of him. 

The most money Kim made in a single year on Tour was $4.6 million. That year, he won twice, had a runner-up finish and was T3 three different times. 

That kind of performance in 2024 would put a player well over $10 million. 

What drove up purses? Lucrative TV contracts and LIV’s emergence would be the top two answers. The Tiger effect (followed by young stars like McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and others) took time to be fully realized financially. 

Stats, Stats, Stats

Strokes Gained putting was adopted by the PGA Tour in 2011, but the other major categories did not officially come online until 2014. 

Almost all statistical analysis of pro golf is viewed through the prism of Strokes Gained. Data Golf, which started as a humble WordPress blog in 2015, has their own version of Strokes Gained in addition to dozens of other statistical tools.

Back when Kim was at his peak, golfers still relied on traditional stats like green in regulation percentage and fairways hit. Those kinds of stats tell a portion of the story but often obscure the truth about how well someone played. 

What does Strokes Gained actually mean? A lot of us recognize its importance but can’t explain it. 

I like to tell people that it’s a “traveling par” for golfers that shows performance relative to their competitors. 

Depending on your yardage and where you are hitting from—only those two factors and nothing more—we can determine how many shots it should take for a pro golfer to hole out. 

For example, the average Tour player takes 4.5 strokes to hole out on a 520-yard hole. 

If they hit a massive tee shot down the middle of the fairway and only have 170 yards left, they now are expected to hole out in 3.0 strokes. Their “par” has changed by more than the shot it took to get them there. 

So their tee shot gained them 0.5 strokes against the field. 

Apply that same logic to every shot and we find out who the best players are in every category. It isn’t perfect, but we have a more granular and accurate understanding of how players perform relative to their peers. 

I would consider 2012 a completely different era of social media. Twitter was basically open mic night and we were still posting song lyrics for Facebook statuses. Instagram was only two years old. 

Golf highlights were mostly consumed by watching golf on TV. Now millions of fans rely on social media to view highlights and follow golf tournaments. 

A major part of the experience of watching a big golf event now is the instant reaction within the community. The commentary sometimes becomes the primary source of entertainment over the tournament itself. 

That’s the positive side. The negative side is… almost everything else. 

Shot Tracing is Everywhere

Similar to the first down line in football, it’s unfathomable that we used to watch golf broadcasts without seeing shots traced during the broadcast. 

While the “Protracer” technology debuted during broadcasts in the late 2000’s, it only reached its current level around 2019 when Topgolf (owner of Toptracer) entered into an agreement for its technology to be used all over the course during PGA Tour broadcasts. 

That was the first time shots were traced on all 18 holes. Now it’s become weird to see a full swing where Toptracer isn’t included. 

I went back and rewatched the 2018 Masters this week. There was virtually no shot tracing at all, which is hard to believe given it was only six years ago. During Tiger’s historic victory in 2019, there was a huge spike in the tracer. 

As time has gone on, the tracer has seemed to get more reliable. There used to be instances of obvious errors but that rarely happens anymore. 

Not only has it made golf viewing more entertaining, but shot tracing is omnipresent in other areas of the game like tech-savvy driving ranges, simulators, launch monitors and YouTube golf. 

It’s hard to imagine the game without it. 

The Emergence of Launch Monitors and Simulators

The tech landscape has changed dramatically since 2012. 

Our list of best launch monitors of 2023 would be hard to believe more than a decade earlier, particularly when you look at the vast array of options available. 

The original Rapsodo MLM launch monitor was only introduced in 2019. Flightscope’s Mevo line was only getting started in 2016. It was these types of products that gave golfers access to launch monitor data—albeit not at the precision levels of a TrackMan or other high-grade launch monitors—for a more reasonable price. 

Back in 2012, launch monitor access was more limited to club fitters or pros fine-tuning their games. The launch monitor market was dominated by radar devices rather than the copious amount of camera-based options we have today. 

There are more layers to launch monitors in terms of what a golfer needs and what they have to pay for it. 

TrackMan and Foresight have the high-end market with $20,000+ options for high-grade precision and every data point you could ask for—but for most golfers looking to get into the launch monitor game, it’s not necessary to spend that much. 

A unit like the Full Sking Kit, which offers 16 data points, is in the $5,000 range. The Bushnell Launch Pro is around $2,000. And then below that, there are mobile launch monitors that are simple to use and cost about what you would expect to pay for a new driver. 

In the case of a product like the Rapsodo MLM2Pro, the accuracy rivals its more expensive competitors. 

Similarly, simulator setups were out of reach for most in 2012. Now there is a high amount of personalization and a wide range of price options. 

Shot Tracking, Rangefinders, GPS and Other Apps

Remember when we used to walk off yardages from sprinkler heads? 

Remember when we didn’t automatically know the front, middle and back yardages regardless of where we were on the course? 

Yeah, I don’t miss those days. 

The guesswork has been taken out of golf on every level, and that guesswork still (for the most part) existed in 2012. Consider that Arccos was only just being founded that year. Now shot data is easily available across a variety of platforms. 

Our best value rangefinder of 2023 cost $150, and there are cheaper options. The most popular rangefinders of 2012 were in the $250-$500 category. 

In 2012, telling someone you had a golf watch usually meant an actual watch that only told time. Golf watches did exist but nothing like their current form. 

We were in the time of the iPhone 5 back then. Golf apps were limited. Now you can host live scoring for your buddy tournaments on an app. 

You get the idea. 

What else am I missing? Let me know below.