The Golf Channel
- Dustin Johnson hit a drive 489 yards at the Dell Match Play event, longest drive ever recorded on the PGA Tour
- There is no video of the now-mythical drive, so we re-enacted the shot ... sort of.
- It turns out there are two catches: DJ got some help, and the record won't count.
Bubba Watson won the WGC - Dell Match Play event on Sunday, one of the most popular stops on the PGA Tour since it moved to Austin Country Club in 2016.
But the shot everybody keeps talking about came from Dustin Johnson two days earlier when he launched a 489-yard drive, the longest measured on the PGA Tour during the ShotLink era when they started keeping official measurements in 2003.
That's correct. 489 yardsssss. The ball traveled nearly five football fields and more than a quarter-mile.
Sadly, there is no evidence of drive as there is no video, but we went to the par-5 12th hole to check it out and spoke to some people who did witness the event.
Here is the view from the tee box. The arrow is where the ball came to rest. That's a long ways away.
Cork Gaines/Business Insider
Johnson was facing Kevin Kisner at the time, who hit his own drive 350 yards. DJ still out-drove him by 139 yards!
Johnson had a several factors working in his favor. First, the hole is not only long, but sloped - this is the Texas Hill Country. The tee is elevated 82 feet from the point where the ball came to rest. Johnson also had a stiff breeze to his back and is already one of the longest drivers on Tour.
But there was also a bit of a catch as Johnson got some help.
Since there was no video, what we didn't see is that Johnson hit a cart path on the fly, according to people who were working at the hole at the time. Now, the road is still 370 yards from the tee, so he still hit a ton. But the ball then bounced and rolled another 119 yards - the length of a football field, including end zones - before coming to rest.
Cork Gaines/Business Insider
In other words, it was a perfect storm to hit a record drive.
But there was another important catch. The drive occurred during a match play event, and unfortunately for Johnson, the PGA Tour does not recognize records that occur during non-standard events.
According to the PGA Tour, the longest official drive is Davis Love III's 476-yard drive in 2003.
That said, Johnson's drive is still an impressive feat. DJ hit the ball so far, it took me 4.5 minutes to walk from the tee box to where the ball stopped. Don't worry, I sped up the video.