The two big improvements that helped Ben Griffin have a career year in 2025
In 2025, Ben Griffin went from being a decent PGA Tour player to a three-time winner and one of the best players in the world. What changed? Using Arccos Pro Insights—the advanced statistical analysis platform I use to advise nearly 50 players on the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LPGA Tour—we analyzed Griffin’s data and saw exactly where his game made the leap from a solid tour pro to a top 20 player in the world.
First, the big picture. Griffin’s strokes gained/total improved by 0.716 in 2025—60 percent of that improvement came off the tee and 36 percent came from approach play. Prior to 2025, the main thing holding Griffin back from being a top 20 player in the world was his driving.
This started to change in the fall of 2024, when he had a stretch of six events in a row (from Utah to RSM) where he gained shots off the tee in all those events. It’s no surprise that he had finished in the top 25 in five of those six events.
When we compare his driving stats from 2024 to 2025, he went from losing -0.072 shots per round to gaining 0.356, which is a massive improvement. This was done mostly by gaining distance. In 2024, his average clubhead speed with driver was 114.6 mph, his average ball speed was 172.6 mph and the average height of his tee shots was 108 feet.
All three were significantly higher in 2025. His clubhead speed jumped to 117.4 mph, ball speed was 177.5 mph and height was 119 feet. This translated to nearly 10 more yards of distance. What’s remarkable is that his accuracy also improved slightly. He went from hitting 59 percent of tee shots within 15 yards of the target line to 61 percent of tee shots finding that 15-yard window.
The other area that improved a lot was his approach play, particularly outside 175 yards. More speed usually means more height with shots into the greens, which is especially helpful on longer approaches outside 175 yards. When you hit it higher, you can stop it quicker and go for more flags. In 2025, Griffin started to take a more aggressive approach into the greens.
We know this because we can analyze where his approaches finish. In 2024, Griffin hit 3 percent more greens than the average player, while missing on the short side 2 percent less than average. In 2025, however, Griffin was exactly average in both categories, meaning he hit slightly few greens and missed more greens on the short side, which means he was attacking more pins.
Lastly, Griffin became more consistent within each round. In 2024, he was gaining 0.4 shots in the first six holes of each round, then 0.2 in the middle six holes, and only 0.1 in the last six holes. His performance was tailing off as the round went on. In 2025, the drop was still there but slightly less evident (0.6, 0.4 and 0.4). This change made him 0.1 shots per round better, which might not sound like much, but those small values add up to make a huge impact.
What you can learn from Griffin:
For most golfers, working on improving your swing speed is statistically the most important thing you can do for your golf game. In Griffin’s case, an improvement of 3 mph made him gain nearly 0.5 shots/round, which transformed his game!
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Edoardo Molinari is a three-time winner on the DP World Tour, a U.S. Amateur champion, and played on the 2010 European Ryder Cup team alongside his brother Francesco. In addition to his playing career, Edoardo serves as the statistician for dozens of players on the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LPGA Tour, including Matthew Fitzpatrick, Viktor Hovland and Nelly Korda. On the Arccos Pro Insights platform, Molinari plugs shot data into a statistical algorithm to precisely identify the strengths and weaknesses of each player.
