Long Drive Champion Ryan Winther Swing Tip

By James Achenbach

Ryan Winther, the 29-year-old World Long Drive champion from Sacramento, Calif., has some advice on how to hit longer drives.

No charge for the lesson.

“Swing fast is my No. 1 tip,” Winther said. “You have to swing fast. You can’t teach speed, but you can work on it. So forget about swinging slow. Just swing fast.”

Of course, Winther’s tip is all about distance and has little or nothing to do with accuracy. Finding the fairway can be a distinctly different matter. In winning the Re/Max World Long Drive Championship in Mesquite, Nev., Winther hit just 12 drives on Oct. 25, which was the final day of competition, and missed a 68-yard-wide fairway grid with 8 of those 12.

No matter. He did what he had to do. Winther’s victim in the Open Division match-play final was Tim Burke of Washington, D.C. The two finalists were hitting into a headwind that gusted to 40 MPH, and Winther won with a 343-yard drive, 8 yards longer than Burke’s 335-yard drive. He used a Krank driver head with 4.5 degrees of loft. His shaft was a House of Forged XXXX Ryan Winther signature model.

Don’t have a shaft with your name on it? Never fear. “I’m just a freak,” Winther said of his ability to put golf balls into orbit.

Slow Down to Speed Up

By Ron Kaspriske

You can only swing the club as fast as you can slow it down. Think about that for a bit. I'll get back to that statement.

We're all looking for 10, 15, 20 more yards off the tee and to hit 8-iron where we once hit 7-iron. But how do you get it? A new driver? A new ball? Bigger biceps?

You might squeeze a few more yards out with any of those suggestions. But if you really want more distance, there's really only one thing you can do.

Swing the club faster.

I recently spoke with Tom House about this topic. House is a former major-league pitching coach who is now an athletic-performance analyst for the University of Southern California. He's also one of the world's leading experts on making athletes faster in any sport -- including golf.

The sobering reality is that as we age, we lose the flexibility and muscle mass needed for speed, House says. But you can still train whatever you have left in the tank, provided you first understand one simple, but brilliant concept:

You can only swing the club as fast as you can slow it down.

When House first said that to me, it took a little time for me to believe it. But when you think about it, it's true. Here's an analogy to help reinforce that concept. I believe Greg Rose of the Titleist Performance Institute deserves credit for it: You're driving a Ferrari capable of going 200 miles per hour. But the braking system on the car will only work up to speeds of, say, 180 mph. Now I ask you, what's the fastest you're going to drive the car?