Who has the longest drive in PGA?

Drive (golf)

In golf stroke mechanics, a drive, also known as a tee shot, is a long-distance shot played from the tee box, intended to move the ball a great distance down the fairway towards the green.

Longest drives [ edit ]

Main article: Long drive

The top 115 longest hitters on the PGA tour in 2017 averaged a drive of 290 yards or over. [1] Some of the biggest hitters on the female tour, such as Maude-Aimee Leblanc, average just below 280 yards. [2] As of 2011, Watson had the longest average drive in professional golf, with an average drive of 315.2 yards, [1] capable of generating a ball speed of 194 mph and drives of up to 370 yards. [3]

On the 2019 PGA Tour, the average driving distance was 293.8 yards, a 2.3 yard drop attributed to weather conditions. [4]

Mike Austin holds the world record for the longest drive in professional play, driving 515 yards at the Winterwood Golf Course in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1974, blasting it 65 yards past the flag on the par-4 fifth. [5] His golf swing, known as The Mike Austin Swing, is practiced and taught by current golf professionals. Other notable swings are Ben Hogan’s swing, Jim Furyk’s swing, and Tiger Woods’ swing.

Golf driving is big business in the United States and golf driving instruction is a multi-million-dollar business with many manuals and instructors offering their expertise to maximize the drives of their consumers.

According to professionals, flexibility, technique and form are very important in a drive, as a flexible player is able to generate a longer drive by having the ability to swing with a wider arc to get the club up to a greater speed and thereby impart more momentum to the ball. Some of the world’s longest drivers who are not professional golfers but compete in Long Drive contests such as the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship, such as Jamie Sadlowski and Mike Dobbyn, are capable of regularly hitting a ball over 400 yards and over 220 mph. [3]

Two-time World Long Drive champion Sadlowski is of average height and slight of build but is able to generate drive distances of up to 445 yards, far beyond those of some of the more powerfully built professional golfers, because of his unique flexibility and leanness of build. [6] Motion Golf, a company that creates sophisticated 3D swing animations of players, has deduced that in his swing he rotates his shoulder 166 degrees, but his hips move only 49 degrees; Tiger Woods averages around 85 degrees in comparison. He claims that the secret behind his unusually long drive is to «Think swing fast, not hard.» [6]

However, the official world record holder, Mike Dobbyn, whose longest drive is a world record 551 yards, is 6 ft 8 in and a muscular 310 pounds, implying that raw power is also very important, particularly in the left shoulder and right pectoral (for a right-handed golfer) and in the twitch muscles on the left side. [7] Several of the past RE/MAX winners, such as Sweden’s Viktor Johansson, have also been at least 6 ft 5 in and near 300 pounds and five-time winner Jason Zuback was an amateur powerlifter.

In February 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first person to golf anywhere other than Earth. He smuggled a golf club and two golf balls on board Apollo 14 with the intent to golf on the Moon.

References [ edit ]

1. ^ ab«PGA Tour Driving Distance». PGA Tour . Retrieved 2017-11-18 .
2. ^
3. «Average Driving Distance | LPGA | Ladies Professional Golf Association». LPGA . Retrieved 2017-11-18 .
4. ^ ab
5. «Long Drive Contest» . Retrieved 15 July 2011 .
6. ^
7. Stachura, Mike (August 24, 2019). «Men’s pro tours see driving-distance averages decline in 2019 (yes, decline)». Golf Digest.
8. ^
9. Lennox, Doug (31 August 2009). Now You Know Big Book of Sports . Dundurn Press Ltd. p. 319. ISBN978-1-55488-454-4 . Retrieved 15 July 2011 .
10. ^ ab
11. «How does this guy bomb it?». Golf Digest . Retrieved 15 July 2011 .
12. ^
13. Research quarterly / American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. 1964 . Retrieved 15 July 2011 .

The 10 longest drives in PGA Tour history measured by ShotLink

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What’s the longest drive in PGA Tour history? The answer to that depends on who you believe and what you count as a measured drive. There are actually three answers to that question, and one is Tiger Woods. The longest drive in PGA Tour history, technically, is a 787-yard drive hit in the 1992 Texas Open by Carl Cooper. Cooper’s tee shot on the par-4, 456-yard third hole hit a downward-sloping concrete cart path way right of the fairway and took off, ultimately going 787 yards and stopping behind the 12th green at Oak Hills Country Club. Cooper took another three shots to get back to the green, then two-putted for a double bogey.

Another longest drive in PGA Tour history is credited to Mike Austin, 64 years old at the time, who hit a 515-yard drive on Sept. 25, 1974 in the National Seniors Open Championship, the pre-cursor to the U.S. Senior Open. Austin hit the drive on a 450-yard par 4 at Desert Rose Golf Club in Las Vegas. The club was at 2,000 feet above sea level and the estimated wind on the hole that day was a 35mph helping wind. The modern record in the non-cart-path division, however, belongs to Tiger Woods. Since 2000 in a limited capacity before being expanded in 2003 for all tournaments, the PGA Tour has used ShotLink to measure every shot hit on the PGA Tour, doing so with a laser-based system that offers precise measurement on every hole — something not previously possible. Back in 2002, Woods hit the longest drive in PGA Tour history recorded by ShotLink, a 498-yard blast on the par-5 18th on the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort in Hawaii during the Tournament of Champions. As it turns out, the 11 longest drives in PGA Tour history were hit on that hole, including 10 in that 2002 edition of the then-Mercedes Championships.

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However, since we first published this post, the PGA Tour has revised the figures from the 2002 Mercedes, dropping 27 drives from that tournament off the official record. The official longest drive in PGA Tour history belongs to Davis Love III, who hit a 476-yard drive on No. 18 at Kapalua’s Plantation Course in the 2004 Mercedes Championship. The longest recorded drive is Dustin Johnson’s 489-yard drive in the third day of match play in the 2018 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, but stats for the match-play event are unofficial and don’t count toward historical rankings.

The 10 longest drives in PGA Tour history

• Tiger Woods — 498 yards, 2002 Mercedes Champ, Round 2, No. 18 at Plantation Course at Kapalua (Unofficial)
• Dustin Johnson — 489 yards, 2018 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Round 3, No. 12 at Austin Country Club (Unofficial)
• Davis Love III — 476 yards, 2004 Mercedes Champ, Round 4, No. 18 at Plantation Course at Kapalua
• Jeff Sluman — 473 yards, 2003 Bob Hope Chrysl, Round 2, No. 14 at PGA West (Palmer)
• Charley Hoffman — 467 yards, 2009 Texas Open, Round 3, No. 1 at LaCantera GC (Resort)
• Dustin Johnson — 463 yards, 2011 Deutsche Bank, Round 4, No. 7 at TPC Boston
• Scott Stallings — 460 yards, 2022 WM Phoenix Open, Round 12, No. 15 at TPC Scottsdale
• Justin Thomas — 457 yards, 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship, Round 3, No. 10 at Club de Golf Chapultepec
• David Duval — 454 yards, 2002 Bob Hope Chrysl, Round 5, No. 13 at PGA West (Palmer)
• Retief Goosen — 452 yards, 2003 Mercedes Champ, Round 2, No. 18 at Plantation Course at Kapalua
• Craig Perks — 451 yards, 2002 Buick Classic, Round 2, No. 12 at Westchester CC
• Gary Woodland — 450 yards, 2012 Hyundai T of C, Round 1, No. 18 at Plantation Course at Kapalua
• Phil Mickelson — 450 yards, 2013 WGC-Cadillac, Round 1, No. 17 at TPC Blue Monster at Doral
• Craig Perks — 449 yards, 2002 Phoenix Open, Round 1, No. 13 at TPC Scottsdale

Kapalua’s Plantation Course has given up the overwhelming number of 400-yard-plus drives in PGA Tour history. In the history of the PGA Tour’s use of ShotLink through 2016, there had been 410 (was 437) drives of 400 or more yards dating back to Casey Martin being the first to do it in 2001. Of those 410 drives of 400 yards or more, 236 were at the Plantation Course. Another 56 have come at Firestone Country Club’s South Course, home of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Another 41 came at LaCantera Country Club, former home to the Valero Texas Open. Three courses account for 330 of the 437 400-yard-plus drives in the PGA Tour’s history of using ShotLink.

So, who has the most 400-yard-plus drives in the ShotLink era (through 2016)?

• 13 — Dustin Johnson
• 12 — Bubba Watson
• 11 — Davis Love III
• 10 — Ernie Els
• 9 — Gary Woodland
• 9 — Stuart Appleby
• 8 — J.B. Holmes
• 8 — Vijay Singh

And while Tiger Woods has the longest recorded drive in PGA Tour history with ShotLink, he has just six total 400-plus-yard drives in his PGA Tour career.