At that event, his clubhead speed was measured at 131 mph, which set an unofficial world record at the time. He then began working with his mentor, Dr. He went on to play football for the University of Central Arkansas. But on the first play of the first game of his junior year, he suffered a serious back injury that forced him to quit football. The injury would require a series of cortisone shots up and down his spine and left his right hip numb for decades.įollowing graduation, he turned to golf and qualified to play in the 1976 Las Vegas Invitational. He was born on February 1, 1955, in Conway, Arkansas. As a teenager golf played second fiddle to football where he was a star linebacker. His visionary leadership and pioneering efforts gave rise to what would become the Long Drive Tour. He possessed the rare combination of supreme athletic ability and was equally adept at promoting the sport. Pricing may vary.Mike Dunaway was a true legend of Long Drive. Trust me: The yards are out there.Īll of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. Just like swinging fast on purpose automatically builds speed, so does experimenting with driver setups. With every little tweak, we find something new - and those precious extra miles per hour. Dial in your gearĬompliments to my long-drive coach Bobby Peterson at One Stop Power Shop in North Carolina for helping me get both my competition long driver (a 4-degree Callaway Epic Flash with a little extra weight positioned toward the heel) and regular gamer (right now, a 6.5-degree Callaway Mavrik with a 2X Paderson KINETIXX shaft). Here’s your chance to go fast without penalty. “Golf at times forces you to go slow,” Bernie says. A fun iteration of this drill is to try to hit six balls as hard as you can in two minutes, like the setup we use for long-drive competitions. It will also respond to your repeated swings. Don’t worry - your body will tell you when too much is too much. Very few recreational players put this kind of effort into their driver swing. You’ve heard the phrase “Don’t skip leg day”? Well, don’t skip driving day. And soon enough, you’ll automatically increase the length of your swing even in the absence of side and back bends. You’ll use the ground more, leveraging your weight against the turf. Your stance will become more sturdy and supportive. What you’ll find is that over time your body will naturally route your hands in the correct delivery position. It should feel like a workout, with your heart pumping and pores sweating. Start with 25 balls and build up to 50 (and let me know when you can reach 300 like I d0). Don’t worry about where the ball goes and don’t think once about mechanics. At least once a week (I do it almost every day), take the governor off your swing and just go for the fences. As Bernie says, “It’s okay to feel reckless.” 3. Remember the feeling when you’re on the course. Better yet, they really get your heart rate up. If I don’t feel like doing dead lifts, I’ll run sprints - a great glute workout. Honestly, I don’t do much more than those pulldowns, dumbbell curls (for my forearms) and dead lifts (for my glutes). Your lats, along with your glutes and forearms, are the key speed muscles. Nothing fancy, just some standard pulldowns on the lat machine. As Bernie says, “You have to pull down hard and fast from the top to create speed.” It’s what gives me my “pop,” like you see off the bat of Mike Trout or guys like Cameron Champ and Rory McIlroy on Tour. When I do that while simultaneously rotating my hips, the club slots and starts picking up speed. When I’m really on, I can drop my hands a solid foot in the blink of an eye. One of my best moves is dropping my hands from the top. Increasing your range of motion using these exercises, or “releasing your upper body” as Bernie calls it, allows for high hands at the top and the swing width that automatically adds miles per hour to your motion. It’s easy: Do side bends and, more importantly, back bends. As Bernie tells me, “Your spine is engineered to move more than you think it can.” So we work on ways to max out its flexibility. As you can see in the above photo, my hands at the top are extremely high. Jack Grout, who famously taught Jack Nicklaus, had a great saying: “Get your hands as high as you can and hit it as hard as you can.” Count me as a believer.
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