Bryson DeChambeau hits his drive on the 3rd hole at Augusta National last month.
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Kyle Berkshire explodes his golf ball into the screen of a golf simulator ahead of him. He walks up to the screen to watch its flight, then steps back for the landing.
299.1 yards.
“Sick,” Bryson DeChambeau says.
Berkshire raises his right arm and flexes it. But he wants to hit again. He can make it a round number. He knows he’s got that extra yard in him.
“That’s farther than the average Tour driver,” DeChambeau says.
He’s right. Last year, the PGA Tour driving average was 295.4 yards.
A few seconds later, DeChambeau laughs.
“8-iron.”
Berkshire has won six world Long Drive events, including last year’s world championship. His longest drive in competition is 492 yards. DeChambeau is the Tour’s longest driver. His average of 322.1 yards last season was the best since the Tour began tracking the stat, in 1980. When the two, along with social media golf sensation Garrett Clark, met up at DeChambeau’s home in Dallas, it was, as DeChambeau said, “sick.” Eight-iron-longer-than-a-PGA-Tour driver sick.
“Great to finally get together with @brysondechambeau!” Berkshire wrote on Instagram this weekend. “Pretty amazing to see the things he does to be the best. He will definitely be getting even faster and longer.”
DeChambeau and Berkshire shared four videos on Instagram Live, and Clark six. DeChambeau’s first two were the 299-yard 8-iron, and the last two were the 302-yard one. Berkshire and Clark each shared videos of DeChambeau working on an arm weight machine in his garage — “The vibes are unreal in the gym today,” Clark wrote — and DeChambeau and Berkshire hitting into the simulator.
A little over a year ago, DeChambeau began to add weight and muscle in order to add distance in order to add victories — which he did, when he won the U.S. Open in September. Now, a little over a month after his last appearance, at the Masters, DeChambeau is lifting and hitting with a long drive champ and a social media golf sensation.
Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
