The modern game has taken driving distances in golf to a completely different level.
Players like Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy can hit the ball over 300 yards with ease, forcing historic golf courses like St. Andrews to undergo renovations to keep up with increasing tee distances.
But even the long hitters of today cannot compete with what a 64-year-old golfer did in 1974, as he hit the longest drive ever recorded in an official golf tournament: 515 yards!
How Mike Austin hit golf’s longest ever drive at 64 years old
Mike Austin was in his golfing prime around 80 years ago, but his technique is still being taught in the modern game, as it helped him to set an unbreakable record in official competition.
Austin was a fiercely intelligent, boisterous, and deeply eccentric physicist, boxer, and opera singer who spent most of his life teaching golf, performing trick shots, and gambling on long-drive bets rather than playing the regular PGA Tour.
His swing technique focused on generating power through his legs with a long backswing, rather than focusing on rotating his body. And on September 25 1974, that paid dividends for him at 64 years old.
At the U.S. National Seniors Open in Las Vegas, Austin stepped up to the tee on a par four and ripped a drive that traveled 515 yards. It remains the longest drive ever recorded in a professional competition.
And he didn’t use modern metal. He hit that ball with a 43.5-inch-shafted persimmon-wood driver and a soft balata ball. Incredible.
Now this record was helped by the conditions, of course. He was playing at Winterwood Golf Course in Las Vegas, Nevada, at over 2,000 feet above sea level. Combine that with a 35 mph tailwind, and it led to the most outrageous drive ever seen, which flew the green on a par four.
But even with advances in modern technology, no one has come close to this ridiculous distance.
The longest drive in PGA Tour history
To this day, PGA Tour players are chasing Austin’s record. But no one, not John Daly, Tiger Woods, McIlroy or DeChambeau, has even come close.
Woods gave it a good go with his PGA Tour record, which was set 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.
Woods found the downslope on the 18th in Hawaii which saw his ball roll out for miles, but it still needed another 17 yards to reach where Austin hit it nearly 30 years prior.
He needed such ideal conditions that this feat will likely never be achieved again, unless things get really out of hand with the advancement of technology.
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