If your tee shot equates to a 250-yard drive, you probably feel like boasting a little. Just don’t brag too loudly around Tim Burke: He owns the record for the longest drive in competition—an astounding 469 yards, or more than four football fields.
Burke’s monster swing has also made him a two-time world long-drive champ (he won the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship in 2013 and 2015) and gotten him top honors at the 2017 Long Drive World Series in Dubai. He’s notched top-three finishes in seven other competitions as well.
What does it take to consistently rocket a ball farther than the length of many holes? Not surprisingly, it has nothing to do with running at the ball and whacking the crap out of it à la Happy Gilmore. Instead, the first order of business, says Burke, who stands 6’6″ and weighs 230lbs, is to stay loose.
“Being more relaxed and fluid will help produce more speed and the most efficient golf swing,” he explains.
Next on Burke’s list of long-drive necessities: maintaining a positive attack angle—so the face is hitting “up” on the ball—when smacking it. “This launches it higher, with the least spin,” he says.
Also, no couch potato steps up to the tee and cranks out multi-hundred-yard shots, so to smash drives 300-plus yards, a solid fitness routine is also key. That’s why Burke hits the gym five days a week with his trainer, Trevor Anderson, C.S.C.S., owner of the Better Every Day Performance Institute in Orlando, FL.
And they don’t work only on strength moves.
“Though strength is important, our daily goals are based on improving three important elements: stability, mobility, and coordination,” says Anderson. “Stability, for a great connection to the ground; mobility, for a smooth range of motion, to create speed; and coordination, which is needed to manage these moving parts through the proper sequence.”
Every week Anderson puts Burke through two days of dynamic foundational lifts, two days of functional rotation, plus a day each of athletic regeneration and active rest.
In addition to training hard, Burke also eats clean and supplements with Performance Inspired products—Ripped Whey Protein, Pure Micronized Creatine, and Post Workout BCAA—to help his body perform at its best and recover fully.
So stay relaxed, train hard, eat clean, supp right, and faithfully implement Burke’s expert driving tips, and you could soon be hitting, say, 280 yards consistently. Then how far away can cracking the elusive 300-yard benchmark be?
And 450-yard bangers like Burke’s? Hey, it could happen.
Directions
First, warm up (jump rope, squats, stability moves, planks), and then perform the exercises as straight sets, taking as little rest as possible between the exercises.
