golf stroke mechanics The golf swing is the action by which players hit the ball in the sport of golf. The golf swing is a complex motion involving the whole body; the technicalities of the swing are known as golf stroke mechanics. There are differing opinions on what ...

, a drive, also known as a

tee A tee is a stand used in sport to support and elevate a stationary ball prior to striking with a foot, club or bat. Tees are used extensively in golf, tee-ball, baseball, American football, and rugby. Etymology The word tee is derived from the ...

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 Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...

Longest drives

The top 115 longest hitters on the PGA tour in 2017 averaged a drive of 290 yards or over. Some of the biggest hitters on the female tour, such as Maude-Aimee Leblanc, average just below 280 yards. As of 2011, Watson had the longest average drive in professional golf, with an average drive of 315.2 yards, capable of generating a ball speed of 194 mph and drives of up to 370 yards. On the 2019 PGA Tour, the average driving distance was 293.8 yards, a 2.3 yard drop attributed to weather conditions. 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 Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

, in 1974, blasting it 65 yards past the flag on the par-4 fifth. His golf swing, known as The

Mike Austin Swing Michael Hoke Austin (February 17, 1910 – November 23, 2005) was an American golf professional and kinesiology expert, specializing in long drives. He was credited by Guinness World Records with hitting the longest drive in tournament play (47 ...

, 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 The World Long Drive Championship is an annual long drive competition in the sport of golf. It was first held in 1974, and since 2000 has comprised Open, Masters (over-45s) and Women's events. From 1995 to 2013, the events were sanctioned by the ...

, such as

Jamie Sadlowski Jamie Sadlowski (born July 6, 1988) is a Canadian professional long driver, golfer and ice hockey player from St. Paul, Alberta. One of the longest drivers in the world with a personal best of 445 yards, he won the RE/MAX World Long Drive Champions ...

and

Mike Dobbyn Mike Dobbyn is an American professional long-drive golfer who holds the world record for the farthest drive in history: a recorded drive at 551 yards. In regular professional golf, the hardest hitters average just over 300 yards. However, although ...

, are capable of regularly hitting a ball over 400 yards and over 220 mph. 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.

Motion Golf In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and me ...

, 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 Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer. He is tied for first in PGA Tour wins, ranks second in men's major championships, and holds numerous golf records. * * * Woods is widely regarded as ...

averages around 85 degrees in comparison. He claims that the secret behind his unusually long drive is to "Think swing fast, not hard." However, the official world record holder,

, 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. Several of the past RE/MAX winners, such as Sweden's

Viktor Johansson Viktor Tobias Johansson (born 14 September 1998) is a Swedish professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for English club Rotherham United. A product of the Hammarby and Aston Villa academies, he has represented Sweden up to under-21 le ...

, have also been at least 6 ft 5 in and near 300 pounds and five-time winner

Jason Zuback Jason Zuback (born 24 April 1970), is a Canadian golfer who competed as a professional long drive athlete. Nicknamed ''Golfzilla'', he won the World Long Drive Championship on five occasions, in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2006. He was inducted i ...

was an amateur

powerlifter Powerlifting is a strength sport that consists of three attempts at maximal weight on three lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. As in the sport of Olympic weightlifting, it involves the athlete attempting a maximal weight single-lift effor ...

. In February 1971,

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

Alan Shepard Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he beca ...

became the first person to golf anywhere other than

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. He smuggled a golf club and two golf balls on board

Apollo 14 Apollo 14 (January 31, 1971February 9, 1971) was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to land on the Moon, and the first to land in the lunar highlands. It was the last of the " H missions", landings at s ...

with the intent to golf on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

References

{{Golf Golf strokes