WINTHER IS COMING
fact is 6'4", 260 lbs. Winther has two trainers and works out eight times a week—five sessions pushing heavy metal in Olympic lifts and three more building fast-twitch muscles by doing high energy agility work. But accord- ing to Winther, if you want to swing hard, the most important thing you do is “swing hard, over and over and over.” He routinely hits 200 drivers in a row. “I don’t care where it goes, I don’t care if I top it, I just want to swing as hard as possible,” says Winther. “You do that for a couple months, then you start refining it and thinking about accuracy.” In competi- tion, a drive counts only if it lands within the 60-yard wide field. That sounds like a big target, but Winther points out, “At the speeds we’re
swinging, being just fractionally off means the ball will go really crooked.” Long Drivers are provided 4"
tees and Top Flite balls. All of their drivers must conform to USGA specs, meaning a clubhead no larger than 460cc and a shaft that top out at 48". Johnson, who is 6'4", uses a driver with a 45" shaft and 9.5 degrees of loft. Winther’s Krank driver is 47.5" and 4 degrees, with a 4x stiff shaft. He uses a driver with so little loft because at impact he is swinging 8 degrees up, giving him an effective launch angle of 21 degrees. “Hitting up on the ball is the key to it all,” he says. “You look at a guy like Sergio Garcia, he’s actually hitting down on the ball at impact. That gives him more control and more spin so he can shape shots, but he’s losing a massive amount of distance.” The touring pro’s swing
that Winther most admires is that of the LPGA’s Brittany Lincicome. “She hits up on it beautifully,” he says of a woman nicknamed Bam Bam. “That’s why she can drive it 290.” Winther is more than a brute: he
plays what he calls “real golf ” five days a week, often employing a “knock- down” driver. It goes only 380. If he’s playing a money match he’ll use a 44" Cobra driver for extra control. Either way, “If I’m chipping and putting well I’ll break 70,” he says. Of course, he never really practices those parts of his game. Some of his long-ball exploits on the golf course have the ring of myth. He once four-putted… for a par. But on that particular par-5 he took a short-cut: “I kinda drove it over a mountain,” Winther says. He has one career albatross, but he didn’t hole-out a shot from the fairway, he
Ryan Winther won the 2012 Long Drive world championship.
Dustin Johnson topped the PGA Tour’s driving distance stats in 2015, at 317.7 yards a drive.
Some of his long-ball exploits on the golf course have the ring of myth. He once four-putted. . .for a par.
30 /
NCGA.ORG / WINTER 2016
DUSTIN JOHNSON PHOTO: USGA
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