Kyle Berkshire’s power off the tee is a sight (and sound) to behold.
The world long drive pro routinely generates over 145 mph of clubhead speed, and his ball shoots off the clubface in excess of 230 mph. His longest drive in competition topped out in the neighborhood of 500 yards, and he currently holds the title of golf’s longest driver.
With power like that, Berkshire is no stranger to setting records. But Berkshire recently set his sights on the biggest, baddest record of them all: longest drive of all time.
Wheels in motion
During the pandemic, when everything from restaurants to sports leagues shut down, Berkshire was unable to compete. With all the extra time on his hands, he took a road trip out West. His destination? Bandon Dunes.
As any golf fanatic would, Berkshire built in plenty of time on his journey to stop along the way and play some golf. Little did he know, one course in Wyoming — Rochelle Ranch, which sits at an elevation of more than 8,000 feet — would be the perfect stage for a record-setting drive.
“As it was getting dark, I saw [the course],” Berkshire told GOLF.com. “What struck me was how big it was. So I pulled off to the side of the road and found out it was like an 8,000-yard course. I was able to get a tee time the next morning, and when I played I hit a drive that was like 500 yards.”
Of course, with no official witnesses to the feat, Berkshire’s smash was unofficial. But it did set the wheels in motion on his quest to hit the longest drive of all time.
The mark to beat
There is some debate as to what the longest drive of all time actually is.
The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes only the longest drive in competition, and that mark is 515 yards, set by Mike Austin at the 1974 U.S. National Seniors Open championship in Las Vegas — when Austin was 64. (He used a persimmon driver and balata ball but was aided by a 27-mph wind at his back.)
But there are recorded instances of longer whacks.
Carl Cooper once hit a drive that measured nearly 800 yards on the PGA Tour, but that belt was aided by (several) cart paths. In the world of long drive, Scott Smith hit a drive 539 yards, and then in 2007, Mike Dobbin hit a drive that measured 551 yards.
“Five-hundred-fifty-one yards is the longest that there’s veracity for,” Berkshire said before making a run at the record. “It was hit on a golf course with golf-course conditions … I’m talking about drives where it makes contact with a surface that is, like, not cement. That is agrarian, cultivated surface that is not foreign to the sport of golf.”
So Berkshire had his mark: 551.
Record blast
Berkshire was on a West Coast trip with a film crew from his YouTube channel The Bombers Club last week, and they’d planned to visit Wyoming to take a crack at the record on the tail end. But with weather conditions deteriorating at Rochelle Ranch, they cut their West Coast swing short and headed to Wyoming a bit earlier than expected.
On shoot day, the forecast looked ominous.
“Around 11:45, as I’m still getting stuff figured out for how the attempt was gonna go down in a couple hours, [fellow long driver] Bobby Bradley came busting through the doors and said, ‘Dude, you’ve gotta go right now,'” Berkshire said. “So we scrambled about a hundred people and got out there and had balls in the air by 12:10.”
It didn’t take Berkshire long to set the record. For the first 15 to 20 balls, he had the benefit of the wind blowing directly at his back. And when he caught one of the balls in the perfect spot, it resulted in a drive that will go down in history.
When the crew at the far end of the hitting zone had made their measurements, the record was official. With a blast of 579.6 yards, Berkshire had ripped an all-timer.
“Had we waited another 30 minutes or so, we would not have done it,” Berkshire said. “It was one of those things where the weather played a humongous factor. We basically had that 30-minute window before the rain hit where the wind was acceptable and we could do it. It really worked out well.”
The next frontier
Is Berkshire satisfied? You can probably guess the answer that question.
“It was exciting, but there’s so much work to be done,” Berkshire said. “I’m gonna do 600 [yards] at some point this spring down there. It was only 51 degrees when I hit the record ball. And so going down there in the spring when it’s a little warmer and we can have a few more days to have the weather line up perfectly, I want to hit one 600.”
It didn’t take Berkshire long to set another record. Shortly after he smashed the longest-drive record, he headed inside to try for the fastest-ever ball speed. Within the hour, he’s set a new high mark of 241.7 mph.
“I just happened to be moving the club pretty well,” he said. “Worked out really well because we were able to break two records that day, and it very easily could’ve been zero.”
