Q&A: World Long Drive Champ Kyle Berkshire on His Hair, Nickname and Driver Flex (It's Not What You Think)
It was no surprise when Kyle Berkshire won the World Long Drive Championship last weekend at Atlanta’s Bobby Jones Golf Course.
It was his third title in the last four years and it came on the heels of his world-record 579-yard drive at altitude in Wyoming earlier in the month. He’s 26, he played college golf at North Texas State and Central Florida and he creates clubhead speed like nobody else in golf.
The same day as that 579-yarder at Rochelle Ranch in Rawlins, Wyo., he recorded a ball speed of 241.7 mph, also a world record. He was clearly the man to beat in Atlanta but it was close. Berkshire won the title in the final with a drive of 398, one yard longer than Sean Johnson. Berkshire won a quarterfinal match earlier with a 432-yard bash.
The follow-through from Kyle Berkshire's 398-yard title-winning drive last week.
Alex Slitz/Getty Images
Here are highlights from his recent conversation with Sports Illustrated ...
Sports Illustrated: In college, you discovered your propensity for hitting massive shots outstripped your propensity for shooting low scores. You’re a world champ so you don’t look back at that at all, do you?
Kyle Berkshire: You’d be surprised. I do from time to time. Two guys I came in with as freshmen at North Texas, Thomas Rosenmueller and Ian Snyman, are both successful tour pros now. They’re not household names but they’re making 500 grand a year, on average. Thomas just missed getting his PGA Tour card so he’s got full Korn Ferry Tour status. Ian got one of those five LIV Golf qualifying spots, played in a couple events, made about 800 grand and he’s got full Asian Tour status. So they’re both successful.
My issue was I could go really low on any given day, I just had trouble stringing together four consecutive rounds. I gravitated toward long drive because you can have 17 great holes in golf and one bad hole completely ruins it but in long drive, you could have seven bad swings and one great swing could redeem the entire set.
SI: Was there one moment that tipped your decision?
KB: I hit a 474-yard drive in my first long-drive qualifier and won. If I hadn’t won, that probably would have been my only long-drive tournament because I was pretty set on going back and starting my sophomore year in college. I felt really close with my game. But that was qualifying for the Worlds, so I figured I’d better do a little long drive throughout the summer. I still had a spot on the team waiting for me that fall and I almost won it. When I saw the Trackman numbers popping up on the Telecast, I had no clue I had 220 mph ball speed. I just thought I was getting a lot of good kicks down the grid. I had zero clue I was one of the four fastest ball-speed guys in the tournament and that’s when I realized, “I can win this tournament, I actually can.”
I gave myself three years to win the world championship and if not I would go back to pro golf. I won it all in 2019 and at that point, my path was fairly set. Once you win a world championship, you pretty much can make a good living at long drive the rest of your life.
SI: This seems counterintuitive but do you really use only a regular-flex shaft in your driver?
KB: The big thing with me is a more flexible shaft allows me to create a little more speed because it causes more (clubhead) toe rotation. A shaft will kick down at the bottom of a swing. The regular flex is certainly not as accurate but it does produce similar amounts of balls in the grid, it’s just that the misses are much worse. But in long drive, it doesn’t matter if you miss the grid by five feet or 200 yards. In real golf, I use a double-stiff shaft flex because it does matter if you miss the fairway by five or 50 yards. I can create a little more speed with a regular shaft and it’s easier on my body, I don’t have to do as much work. I can let the shaft create the speed.
SI: Let’s get to the important stuff—your hair, said the balding guy. You look like one of the Three Musketeers with the long hair, mustache and beard. How did your style happen?
KB: The hair is such a nuisance to deal with sometimes. I was still working my way up on a long drive tour in college, I had pretty short hair then. I went to the barber shop and my barber never showed up to cut my hair. So I left.
SI: And the rest is history. I read in one story your long-drive nickname is "The Viking," is that true?
KB: I don’t have a nickname. But I certainly would not be upset with being known as The Viking. I take my looks a lot more seriously now because I think it’s important as a performer to look a certain way. We had our televised event in May, 2018, and my hair was just long enough to be noticeable and the announcer started referring to it so I just let it grow out the rest of the year. It was in full force by 2019.
SI: Here’s something nobody ever asks a long-drive guy—what was the most memorable putt you ever holed?
KB: I made about a 25-footer on 18 at the Junior World Championship at Torrey Pines to get into the second-to-last group for the final round. That was a big deal for me because I was trying to close out a really good round. I blew my drive way left, had to lay up and the pin was in the back right corner. I hit a great wedge shot but it spun off the back shelf. There were a ton of college coaches watching. I knew if I made the putt, I’d be in the next-to-last group with Lucas Herbert, now on the PGA Tour. I canned the putt and that was really cool. My senior year in high school, I made a 25-footer to win the Maryland state high school championship for our team. Those are two putts I don’t forget.
SI: Before the World Championship in Atlanta, you made news with that world-record 579-yard drive in Wyoming. How fortunate were you to get in some swings there at altitude (4,800 feet above sea level) before weather moved in?
KB: When the pandemic shut down the tour in 2020, I was driving across this country and stopped to play this course in Wyoming on my way to the West Coast. The 14th hole was straight downwind that day and I hit a drive 480 or 490 not even going at it. I realized, “This is where I could maybe hit the longest drive ever recorded sometime.” The timing never worked out.
I started a YouTube channel called “The Bombers Club,” and I thought this would be a great way to jumpstart that. So we threw this together. The people at the course said the weather gets sketchy in October. When we got there, we were going to do it on a Wednesday but the weather was deteriorating rapidly and we moved it up to Tuesday. It was supposed to be 68 degrees with 25 mph winds straight down wind but it ended up being a high of 52 and rain most of the day.
I arrived at the club at 11 (a.m.), I was going to hit at 3 or 4 but one of my team members who’d been out playing came busting in and said, “Dude, you’ve got to go right now, this is your best opportunity, it’s playing straight downwind.” So a hundred guys scrambled at 11:45 and I had balls in the air at 12:05. The rain came after my first 20 swings but I got 579 on my eighth ball. I wanted to go for 600 later in the day but by 3, there was driving rain and a headwind.
I didn’t want all these people who were showing up not to get to watch anything so we set up on the carpet in the clubhouse grill room, cleared out the tables, brought in a net and did a speed session. I set a record for that at 241.7. So it was really cool to have a double like that and we got great content for The Bombers Club show.
SI: One last thing, do you have a walkup song for long drive?
KB: I don’t have one but if I did, it would be “Stranglehold” by Ted Nugent. After the first minute of hearing “Stranglehold,” I promise you’re going to be ready to run through a brick wall.
SI: I think Ted Nugent already did that.