Kyle Berkshire stood on a tee box at Rochelle Ranch Golf Course in Rawlins three years ago and hit a golf ball so far it was airborne for 11 seconds, crossing more than 550 yards of Wyoming before finally touching down at 579.66 yards, farther than any professionally measured drive before it.
On Wednesday, the 6-foot-3 29-year-old from Crofton, Maryland, came back and hit one farther.
Berkshire broke his own world record Wednesday with a drive measured at 588.1 yards, returning to the same city-owned golf course outside Rawlins where he first set the mark in October 2023.
About 60 people came out to watch him try Monday, his first of several days scheduled to attempt to break the recrod.
Winds remained below 9 mph for much of Monday's attempts and shifted often enough that at times they were hurting rather than helping Berkshire, Rochelle Ranch golf pro Kevin Gannon told Cowboy State Daily.
Berkshire stuck around until Wednesday, waiting for optimal conditions.
By then, school had started again in Rawlins and the crowd had thinned to about 25 people.
The wind was coming from the west to southwest at a sustained 12 to 13 mph shortly before Berkshire began hitting, Gannon said, following almost exactly the line they wanted. Temperatures had climbed into the 80s, and far down the course the landing area had been measured and marked at 500, 550 and 600 yards.
Berkshire began swinging and kept swinging.
By late Wednesday afternoon, the local golf pro estimated Berkshire had worked his way through 200 golf balls as the small crowd cheered him on.
“If I did that, I'd probably be in the hospital tomorrow,” said Gannon, who is over 60. “But he's a young guy. ... He does that all the time. He works up to that, and actually, the more he swings, the faster he gets.”
Somewhere among those swings came the ball that traveled 588.1 yards.
Nearly 9 yards farther than any professionally measured golf drive.
Whip It
For Gannon, who has worked at Rochelle Ranch since the course opened in 2004, watching Berkshire hit from nearby has a way of rearranging the ordinary sense of distance.
“Once you see him hit it, it’s one thing, and then you actually stand back, and the distance from where he hit it to where it lands, it’s like nobody can hit a ball that far,” Gannon said.
Long-drive competitors build their equipment and their swings around speed in ways that would make little sense during an ordinary round of golf, he said.
While powerful golfers generally gravitate toward stiff shafts, Berkshire has used a regular-flex shaft, creating an effect he compares to a whip.
The additional flex can generate more speed, but the tradeoff is precision: Berkshire told Cowboy State Daily that being less than one-tenth of a degree off can mean the difference between keeping the ball in play and sending it out of bounds when aiming at a landing area hundreds of yards away.
His swing has been developed around the same purpose. Berkshire's longtime instructor, Bernie Najar, has explained that they built a motion with higher hands and a larger arc, allowing him to generate tremendous force against the ground before releasing it through the ball.
It is an unusual specialization for someone who began as a very good conventional golfer.
A Lot Of Room
Rochelle Ranch opened in 2004 and stretches 7,925 yards from its longest tees, making it the longest golf course in Wyoming.
Its fairways cross open high-desert country on the edge of Rawlins, with little traditional rough separating maintained grass from sand, sagebrush and scrub.
The elevation matters. At roughly 6,800 feet, the thinner air reduces drag on a golf ball, allowing it to travel farther than at sea level.
Then there is the wind.
For most golfers, it is another complication to calculate before choosing a club. For Berkshire, given enough open ground and the right direction, it can become useful.
He recognized what Rochelle Ranch might offer well before he ever set a record there.
“I thought, ‘I'm going to hit the longest drive in the history of golf right here at Rochelle someday,’” Berkshire said in 2023.
He was right.
Below: One of Berkshire's previous record attempts in 2023.
579.66
For his first record attempt Oct. 2, 2023, Berkshire and the Rochelle Ranch crew eventually settled on an unusual line, sending him from the 12th tee toward the 14th green and using the enormous amount of open ground between them as a landing area.
On his eighth attempt, Berkshire connected.
The ball left his club at more than 230 mph and remained in the air for roughly 11 seconds, carrying more than 500 yards before touching down. By the time it stopped, a survey crew measured the distance at 579.66 yards.
A world record.
Berkshire was already thinking about another one.
“It’s not over,” he told Cowboy State Daily afterward. “We’ll be back for another record.”
He was even more specific about what he believed Rochelle Ranch could give him.
“I am going to come back here next summer when it’s 85 degrees and go for 600,” Berkshire said.
It took nearly three years instead.
When he finally returned this week, the course measured that number out onto the ground for him.
588.1
When the measurement came back Wednesday afternoon the small gathering whooped and hollered.
Berkshire kept swinging.
“He's just not going to be happy if he doesn't get to that 600 yards,” Gannon said later Wednesday. “As we speak, he's actually still up hitting.”
By then, however, the wind was beginning to fade and even Berkshire was starting to show the effects of roughly 200 swings.
“Oh boy, he's got to be getting a little tired now,” Gannon said. “And what's happening is the wind is dying down a little bit.”
Still, there might yet be more to come, and Cowboy State Daily will update if he gets it farther.
Gannon said there is an outside chance Berkshire could return to Rochelle Ranch on Thursday and make additional attempts, although forecasts call for lighter winds.
For now, Berkshire has done what he said he would do three years ago: He came back to Rochelle Ranch and broke the record again.
And it was hit in Rawlins, Wyoming.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
