Professional golfer David Carey joins The Health Movement Podcast to talk swing speed, training on the road, smarter practice, and the reality of building a game that holds up under pressure. We cover turning pro at 18 via the Alps Tour, how live-streamed practice on TikTok improves focus, the heavy–low-rep lifting approach that boosts speed without excess fatigue, common amateur mistakes (hello, slice), launch monitors, and why club fitting matters.
Guest: David Carey — TikTok / IG: @davidcareygolf Youtube: @DavidCareygolf57
• DP World Tour, Challenge Tour, and Alps Tour
• Portmarnock GC, Killeen Castle, St Andrews, TPC Colorado, Pebble Beach, Augusta National
• “Every Shot Counts” by Mark Broadie (strokes gained)
• Swedish study: golfers associated with longer life expectancy
⚠️ Disclaimer: This show is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your training, nutrition, or supplement routine.
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👇 Time-stamped chapters below
Chapters:
00:00 — Intro, disclaimer & guest bio
00:45 — David’s origin story: from football to golf
02:07 — Turning pro at 18 via Alps Tour Q-School
03:50 — Why he live-streams practice (TikTok accountability)
08:58 — Golf conditioning: strength vs. endurance
10:29 — Load management: heavy/low-rep to stay fast
12:43 — Priming fast-twitch without over-fatigue
13:23 — Injury prevention: shoes & stability fix
16:51 — On-the-road nutrition & creatine (not medical advice)
19:59 — Blind ranking: Killeen Castle, St Andrews, TPC Colorado, Pebble, Augusta
22:14 — Portmarnock & Irish golf scene
25:07 — Community benefits; Swedish longevity study
26:05 — 3 common mistakes (slice, stiffness, over-control)
31:01 — What swing speeds mean (PGA/LPGA/Amateur)
33:23 — Long-drive potential & David’s own speed
37:26 — Club fitting: specs that matter, budget tips
40:50 — ABC = Always Blame the Caddy (club?)
41:51 — Where to follow David
[Music] All right, welcome everybody to another episode of the Health Movement podcast. We have an awesome guest which I I need a lot of help from him. But before I introduce him, um my name is Derek. I’m a certified personal trainer and teacher of over 20 years. We are not doctors. So please any training or any advice you’re taking from us, please consult your physician before you do anything else. Uh, but with us today we have professional golfer David Kerry coming out of Dublin, Ireland, which as uh my last name is O Rearden, so I am halfIrish. Um, so I appreciate you hopping on with us. Thank you, David. No problem at all. Thanks for having me. Um, so just as a like a softball question to start off with, tell us tell us how you got into golf and what’s your journey’s been like up until now. Yeah. Um, I mean I remember having like little plastic clubs, a photo of me somewhere in my mom and dad’s house. So I guess I was maybe three or four when I had them. I think we used to whack a little plastic ball around the house. Um, then that progressed to, you know, playing with real clubs and real golf balls. I got a little bit older. Um, but yeah, um, you know, I played a lot of football, soccer, soccer, football. not not your football as a kid, but um so it used to very much be play soccer all winter and then golf in the summer. Then once I got to the age of around I’m going to say about 12 or 13, that’s where I kind of focused pretty much solely on golf from that point on. I saw it looked like was it 2015 you turned pro? I think that Yep, that’s correct. So was that 19 years old? Yeah, I think I I think I was still 18. I think it was oh I want to say February or March in 201. How’d that decision come about? Was that a conversation with your parents or did they kind of know this is where things were headed? It was not a planned thing really. Um so over over here in Europe we have what’s called the Alps Tour. So it’s like the vision tree for golf. So you have the DP tour, you have the challenge tour, then you have the Alps tour. And um as an amateur in December, they hold their qualifying school. So someone said it’d be a good idea to just kind of go for experience, go kind of try that out, and I end up getting a card. Um my first one ever at that event, actually. But um yeah, so the first couple events were held in February time out in Egypt. So I went out to Egypt as an amateur and finished oh it was either fifth or sixth and then 11th in the two events and thought this pro golf thing is really easy and I should turn pro. That’s awesome because I have a very different feeling when I when I think about golf. It it it it it wasn’t quite as easy as the first two events led me led me to believe. But that’s kind that’s kind of how we uh got going. um yeah, my coach at the time and then some of the people I took advice from. I asked them what they taught and they said, you know, if you want to be a pro golfer, be a pro golfer. That was sense. That’s kind of how I got going. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And you’re on you’re on TikTok. That’s where I saw you. You were you were kind of talking talking with people as you were doing some practice swings and stuff. Um which I appreciate. I I think that’s awesome to give people like kind of a view into what your what your day is like and that seems to have worked well for you to to make connections that way. Yes. So last year I kind of had a bit of a nightmare year healthwise in terms of I got really really sick with a really bad virus and then I picked up an injury because I tried to get back too quick from being I I did that whole cycle. Um, and uh, Kate Dun, who you probably heard behind the camera, Kate is my girlfriend and she cames out, she comes out in the course with me and she was taking videos for, well, for me to analyze my swing and what was happening. And as we were working our way back, um, we decided, well, we may as well do something. We have all we had this we had about I don’t know 100 gigabytes worth of videos on on my phone. So it was like edit a few of them and you know start posting them on some of the socials and stuff cuz like I’d already had Instagram and stuff like that but I never really actively tried to push that side of things. But yeah, uh you know, Tik Tok is the one that took off and then kind of recently enough we started adding in some of the live stuff on top of that and that that’s actually been doing amazing. Like I think we had um we were on for about three hours today and we had about 80,000 viewers live. Yeah. Like every time I pop in there are hundreds of people in there every time, which is, you know, and like you said, it’s it it’s a kind of a two-sided thing. I try answer some questions and help some people. And the flip side is it kind of holds me a bit accountable when I’m practicing as well because when you have a three or four foot put and there’s a thousand people watching you it just adds a little bit of extra incentive to make sure you make that paw. So it kind of that’s true and honestly that’s probably helpful for to replic you can’t replicate like an actual match or round during a tour but you’re used to having people watching everything. So that’s maybe it translates a little bit 100% plus I can’t go, you know, throw my club down the fairway or was that was that an issue early on in your career? No, no, I wouldn’t do that anyway, but just but no killed Irish men never lose their temper. So you’re good. Just just level. But no, like it just it’s it’s the whole thing. it, you know, you if you want to be professional when you’re competing, you need to be professional when you’re practicing. And, you know, you should do that anyway. But if there’s a few thousand people watching, it adds to the reasoning. That’s No, that that’s a a good thing that I’m I’m surprised not more people are doing. Um because the engagement piece is is cool. your girlfriend does an excellent job of relaying questions to you and kind of allowing for a back and forth because otherwise you can’t really be looking at the phone while you’re playing it. That that’s not going to keep your head in the right space. Yeah, exactly. And you know, when people do ask me questions, nine times out of 10 I probably answer with another question, but that’s just because when I look at, you know, there’s some really good stuff online, but there’s also some really bad stuff online. And particularly when it comes to golf, there’s no onesizefits-all approach. You can’t just say to everybody, just do this and you’ll get better at golf because it really just depends what your level is, what you’re doing, what your issues are. So, you know, if I’m actually going to try help someone, I need to kind of ask a couple of questions and get an understanding of like what they need or what advice, you know, they need. Because like if someone said to me, I play once every two weeks. How do I get better? you’re not gonna you can’t really send them the same kind of messages if someone says, you know, I play five days a week because the guy’s playing five a week just has so much more time to change things. Whereas if you’re playing once or twice a week, probably the best thing you can do is make better decisions and allow for the fact that there’s going to be inconsistencies. Yeah, that’s a good point. We I I’ve been playing I I’ll say I’ve been playing more this year than I ever have and that’s probably five or six times total this summer. So I’m more the once a week once every other week guy and we I actually went out on Saturday with two other friends and we decided to do just like a best ball al together um just to keep it more fun. The front nine we were plus one. So we were kind of excited. We’re like, “All right, that’s not bad.” Back nine, we were plus 10. So we ended, I think, at plus 11. With three people combined, we couldn’t even It was bad. It was And we’re spent by the end of it. So it’s it’s it’s a long golf is not easy. That’s the No, it’s definitely not. And And if you’ve got to go four rounds in a week in a weekend, like Thursday through Sunday, that’s that. So, actually that leads me into one of my one of my questions is how do you what’s your training like for that or are you just doing so much golf you’ve built up your conditioning for that that sport? I think there’s there’s definitely different sides to it because there is the strength and conditioning side to actually making a golf swing which is very much um in my case very much very much strength based. I’ve always been quite explosive and quite fast. So if I gain strength I gain speed. I know that can be definitely for different people that can be, you know, I know some people that are really strong that really have to do a lot of explosive exercises in the gym to get that kind of transfer, but for me pretty much if I get stronger it just kind of carries straight across in terms of you know if I was trying to hit the ball further but that’s only one aspect is like you said there’s then the endurance side of you know you walk I don’t know call it 10 kilometers or whatever that is six or seven miles every time you play a round of golf. So, you know, Thursday through Sunday is four rounds. You may have to do a proam on Wednesday. You’ve probably done at least nine more holes on the Monday or Tuesday. So, you’re walking a long way. So, that’s more of an endurance thing. It’s I think that side of things is very much just playing lots of golf as opposed to specific gym training. Yeah. No, and I that makes sense. And I imagine like your offse what’s the golf season? And it’s like February around to Well, there’s not really an off season anymore. You kind of like if you want to play all year round, you can play all year round. Oh, all right. So, there’s no offseason training then. You got to What’s the load management like? Because you if you know if you’re strength training, you need recovery. You you’re not going to go lift heavy on a Thursday when you have all weekend you have to play. So, but you need to recover after playing. So, what’s that look like? Balance I found that works best is lifting heavy but with kind of low reps and low sets. Okay. So, so try and not build up massive fatigue. The you know any anything in the higher rep range you start building up a bit more fatigue. I found a bit more soreness. So it it it is a fine balance though because if you don’t train when you’re at events like say you go four, five, six weeks on the road, if you don’t do any training, if you do have two weeks off and you do lift heavy, then you get sore because you’ve been six without doing anything. So you kind of have to just try and do a little bit all the time. It’s, you know, it’s never going to be the absolute optimal for say muscle growth or anything like that, but yeah, if you can get some stimulus and some growth or at least maintain at the very least, then you can push it a little bit harder when you come back without getting the extreme sorets or anything like that. That’s good. That’s Was that a a difficult thing to to kind of figure out a balance in terms of trying to get stronger? very much trial and error. Do you feel like you’re you’re in a good place now and have figured that out? Um, yeah. I mean, you’re always obviously we can always learn like you’re always you’re always grown, but you’re always trying to make little little adaptations or, you know, learning little lessons as you go of how much to do of one thing and the other. Like weirdly, what I find is if I do one really heavy set of say, I don’t know, say dumbbell chest press, some rows, and maybe like a something for the legs. So maybe like um like a leg press, whatever. Whatever I do. If I do like a small session like that today, I’ll be faster tomorrow. Yeah. It’s it wake it kind of basically wakens up all of the you know fast twitch muscle fibers. You get a lot of stimulus that you actually go faster. If I did three sets of everything I’ll be slower because I’ll be fatigued. So it’s there is that balance between priming your body for that kind of the explosiveness because like you know the golf swing is a very quick explosive kind of motion. Um and so your training kind of has to reflect that. Oh yeah. Have you dealt with injuries in your career? I’ve been quite lucky overall that I’ve never had any major issue like like the last few weeks I had a little bit of a niggly hip thing, but it was like it at no point could I not have played around the golf if I had to. if you know that it was more of a the muscles were tight and I needed a physio to go dig in to me and hurt me for an hour to just loosen me which is uh one of those things where it’s very unenjoyable at the time but you know afterwards you’re going to feel a lot better. So you know it took two two or three sessions of that. Weirdly, like I have no scientific backing to this, but I made a change in my golf shoes and that seems to have sorted a lot of it. I went back to an older pair that was like less, how would I call it, like less flexible. It’s much more kind of solid and rigid. And I think that’s provided a little bit of extra stability and has taken some pressure off the That that’s a huge thing there. I um I’m dealing with Achilles tendinitis and I I told you I teach and I paint a couple houses during the summer and being on a ladder is the worst thing apparently for because you’re just your foot’s there. But also I had been buying my sneakers off the sale rack at Kohl’s cuz I I don’t care. I’m like I’m not going to, you know, just give me the cheap stuff. These look good. I’ll be fine. And then I knew I needed orthotics. So I’d buy the cheap ones off Amazon, slide it in. And then my my physical therapy had a stern talking to me where she’s like, “No, you need to go. You need to get like your feet checked and get actual shoes that fit the way your feet cuz mine roll in. So, you got to spend a little more. But the foot support fixes in theory everything from, you know, it’s it’s where your feet your body hits the ground. So, if that’s rolled in or that’s displaced a little bit, the the repercussions are are tough.” Oh, yeah. 100%. like um I was lucky enough to work with some good people down in the Orlando area where I learned an awful lot from in terms of training, recovery, the physio side of things. And like I used to get a little bit of an ingly thing on my left knee, which I’d always put down to I’d had a football injury there when I was a kid, but you know, I worked with them and in like two sessions they’re able to tell me it was basically that the sole of my foot, some of the muscles got tight and then that tightened up my calf muscle and then I also had some tightness in like my abductor area and once they loosened all them out 100% no issues. It was literally like like either side of the knee was being pulled at the same time and that was the discomfort. But until you actually learn what causes things, you kind of think I feel it in the knee, it must be the knee. Yeah. Well, that’s exactly. It’s not like it’s that’s where the pain settles, but like my Achilles is based in a tight calf that I have that goes all the way up to where it meets the hamstring. So, when I go in, that’s what they work. They don’t ever really touch the Achilles much except to try to break up whatever uh I don’t know, it’s not scar tissue, but whatever it is down there. But you’re right, like it it leads to it. What about um nutrition wise? I imagine being on the road, you could stop at McDonald’s or some place like that every meal. No, no, no. Like, like like we can’t do McDonald’s. Like I’m much more of like an In-N-Out kind of guy. Nice. Nice. Well played. Well played. You You definitely like I It really just depends when you’re traveling. you kind of have to go with what’s there’s definitely the balance of the nutrition with the like convenience and how much time do I have and when am I going again and stuff like that. So definitely I I definitely try to prioritize kind of the protein intake because like if you’re doing anything physical you need to have enough protein. Uh supplement wise I always have creatine. So, so, so if I can get those two basics, then you just try your best to try and make it somewhat balanced from there. Oh, creatine. When you mentioned that, I was listening to a uh another podcast today. And for me, it always been like five is it grams? I I think that’s the unit of measurement. Is that what you’re taking right now? Is it the five grams? I She was talking about Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I probably take a little more. I probably take take more like seven to eight grams a day would be my my general Okay. Yeah. That apparently like creatine’s used in the brain as well. Muscles steal the first part of it and then the leftover stuff your brain uses. So the the woman was saying she’s a doctor and she was hopping on umh I think the the Diary of a CEO podcast which is a pretty big one. and they go for a while and she like bases her intake based around her day. Like if she does a a heavy workout or if she’s going to like high stress levels, more creatine helps. So she’ll go up to like 10 10 grams of it on days 10 to I think 15 she said. But it was a lot of like trial and error and figuring out what worked for her. But it’s I think I think I saw a thing recently enough that uh Roy Moy said he did 10 grams twice a day was his Wow. And which is quite a quite a high dose. Yeah, it is. But also you guys are active like you’re it’s not like an hour in the gym, you know? It’s 100% that like I I know it’s been they’ve done studies to show that particularly in older people it can really help our memory and brain function. And so you’re 100% right. Yeah, it’s huge with brain function. And I think a lot a a lot of the research now coming out is is reflecting that whereas most times people think it’s just for muscles. And it’s not a steroid for anybody who’s listening and and you’re wondering, not a steroid at all. Um it’s it’s produced in the liver and in the brain. Um but I I think it was like three milligrams, three to four a day your body produces. So the added part goes to your muscles and then to your brain. Yeah, it is helpful. It’s definitely helpful. Um, but again, we’re not physicians, so go see your doctor before changing anything. Um, so I wanted to do a quick little game with you here if you don’t mind. I’m putting you on the spot. This is going to be completely blind. You don’t know what’s coming, but I want you to rank your favorite golf courses without knowing the next one coming. So, we’ll we’ll do I’ll pick five. Okay. And you just label them one, two, three, or four or five. All right. Um, Colleen Castle, I saw one of your reels where you played there. Okay. Well, it would have been higher before last week, but it didn’t play so good there. So, I’ll have to, you know, naturally, we only like courses we play well at, so we have to drop. I’m going to put that. I mean, something has to be five, doesn’t it? So, we’ll put that five. Something does. Something has to be five. And I’m going to But I’m hoping it’s only going to be five because you’ve picked four excellent courses because it is a very good course as well. So, all right. That is five. I’m just I’m going to tell you that the nine hole pitching putts I play out of the other four. So, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. Uh, next one. Um, St. Andrews I have to put in here. Uh, number one. Number one. All right. Um, TPC Colorado. Is that one you’ve played? I have. Uh, oh, that is a good course, but I like the I’m going to go four. Number four. Go four. All right. All right. the the next two. Pebble Beach. I got to put that in there. You have two and three left. Number three for Pebble. All right. Augusta National. I knew that was going to be next. It had to. That was an obvious one. I have to say I’m quite happy with how this has ended up. All right. That’s good. That’s good. Now, if I would have put in um I I don’t know this one. I saw it in one of the reals. Port Manuk. Is that pronounced right? Port Barnick. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s down the road for me. That That’s in Dublin. Oh, that that’s a really good golf course. I was going to I Is that like a home course of yours? That’s like your jam. Um No. It’s I I I luckily probably play it maybe once a year, but it’s probably have it’s going to have the open in a few years time. It’s exceptionally good golf course. I would probably rate it the number one in Ireland. So I probably that that probably would make the list of number three, I think, from what you’ve mentioned so far. All right. All right. So good to know. Uh, I have I’d been to Ireland a couple times, but it has been a long time since I’d been there. Uh, my last name is Oirden, and we found an Oan cafe on Dingle Peninsula, which actually was closed at the time, and it was me, my mother, and my sister, and we knocked on the door, and the owners like came up. We said who we were. We’re from America. They opened the place up, fired up the grill. It was it was an awesome experience. So, definitely need to get back. But if you were to give a recommendation for which course to play in Ireland, if I could only play one, well, I’m going to be slightly biased to the kind of Dublin area just because that’s where I’m from and that’s where I live. Okay, that’s okay. You would probably go with Portman of what? Okay, but I mean it is a tough question because we have so many good golf courses. All right. So, we’ll I’ll I’ll have to make like a twoe trip and just play a different one each day. Oh, yeah. I I I’d love to say I knew the total number off off the top of my head, but I think considering we have like between the north and the south of Ireland, you know, a population of like say six million people, I think we have like 200 golf courses or something. Wow. That seems like out of proportion right there to have that many golf courses. I think we’re the only country in the world where even people that don’t play golf play golf. Oh yeah. Like even people that don’t really play will probably play once or twice a year. Oh, that’s good though. You know, it keeps you healthy, stays outdoor. Americans are not, you know, there are plenty that just aren’t active at all. So, it’s it’s good that that the Irish are getting out there and doing that. Um, I think Swedish there was a Swedish study. I think now I don’t know any of the like I don’t know the exact specifics of how they tested or how many people are, but I think they found that golfers on average lived something like seven years longer than non-golfers. Really? Yeah. And I I mean I I can definitely see that as there’s two aspects to that. A is fresh air, you’re outside, all that sort of thing. But in my experience, like the amount of older golfers I meet that, you know, you’ll say to them, “What are you doing?” Oh, no, Monday I have to be here. Monday I play with the group of guys and stuff. And I think there’s definitely the community aspect to things that kind of keeps people going in that like no no I have to be I have to be back home on Monday because I need to play with Jimmy and John or whoever, you know. Yeah. So I just one of those random things that I read somewhere. Someone else can go and fact check how good the study was and all the stuff, but I’m going to trust you on that one. David said it it’s it’s 100% true. So we’re gonna we’re gonna go with that one. it. If you’re not playing golf, you should be. That’s all I’m going to say. Yeah, it’s true. But you’re you’re right with the social piece. There’s a lot of research done that the the benefits mentally in in just in longevity of of socializing and being around other people. So, uh that’s good. Now, if and obviously you can’t fix my slice because you’ve never seen me swing. Um, but if there’s a Do you see like common mistakes that people make uh in their golf game? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, could you can I put you on the spot for like three common mistakes people make? Yeah. So, like probably eight golfers out of 10 that particularly like you know your average guy that plays once a week will slice the ball as opposed to hook it. 100%. 100%. So, the aiming to the more to the left is not a correct fix to fix my slice. Well, you see, again, cuz like with everything golf, the answer is going to be yes or no. Like, if it slices the same amount every time and you can aim 30 yards left and it goes where you want it to go, then yes, that’s an answer. But, you know, you’re you just have to accept you’re not fixing the root cause of the issue. And it’s a it’s band-aid solution as opposed to actually fixing it. But again, if you like again, if you play once every two or three weeks, you are not going to be able to fix the root cause because any kind of meaningful change is going to take hundreds or thousands of repetitions until you actually ingrain a movement change. It’s the same as, you know, same as if you’re doing gym work. If you go to the gym once, you’re not going to anything. It’s the consistency and repetitive doing the same things over and over, even if it’s a bit boring, that will actually fix things. Yeah. So, what what causes the slice? Is that the rotation on the ball because the club head’s coming across it or what’s So, yeah. At its most basic, either the club head is cutting across the ball or the face is wide open or more than likely a little bit of both. So, open would be the because the, you know, It’s like 90%. But we can basically say the ball starts with it face points. The ball starts with what? Wherever the club face is pointing, that’s where the ball will start. Okay. It varies a little bit depending on the club, but more or less that that is a true statement. So if you start the ball dead straight and the ball then slices, you can pretty much say for sure that you your club face was pointed at the target at impact and it was then the direction that your club was traveling that caused that curvature. Okay? Whereas if your ball starts right and then slices then we can then also kind of work backwards that your club face was pointing way offline and that is why the ball has gone over there. So that that’s kind of a very basic way of kind of maybe figuring out a little bit of again, you know, if you’re consistently starting at right and it slices, well, I better figure out a way to point this club a little bit more left when I get back to impact. Again, that’s not the root cause, but that very much is if you’re on the course and you’ve hit five drives in a row to the right, at some point I am going to say please, for the love of God, hit one down the left and figure out a middle ground. Yes. Yeah. No, I hear you on that one. I hear you on that one. Please, please do something different. Yeah, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect it to go differently. Exactly. At some point, even if you overcorrect and overcorrection gives you more information of okay, somewhere I’m in the middle now, I’m going to figure it out. That works. That works. And then All right. So, that’s one, the slice, which I am guilty of. Are there any others that you can think of off the top of your head? So, um, the other another really common thing I see is people, how how’s the best way to put this? They get really careful on the golf course to the extent that, you know, the more careful we are with a shot in no way guarantees the ball is going to go straighter or more where we want it to be. We need to treat the golf swing as an athletic motion and it should your setup how you approach it. Everything about that needs to be athletic. You know, there is an there is a weight shift. There’s a lot of turning. You know, if I just turn less and get really static and stiff, we’re killing our golf swing. are killing our ability to create speed, you know, and you know, we’ll end up probably having to try do something really strange at impact to try and generate club speed. Whereas, if we actually, for lack of better words, give away some of the control and actually make a bigger motion, it’ll actually be much easier to control in the long run. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. I um I picked up, you were just talking about club speed and all that. Um, I got a a Garmin R10. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but I picked one of those up and I had a a net in the backyard off of Amazon and I was playing around a golf yesterday and I need to figure something else out because I put a golf ball through the net uh on the seam into the neighbor’s yard and thankfully didn’t break anything, but I heard it at a tree and I was like, “Oh, this probably isn’t a good idea.” But anyway, it would come up with like club speed and all that and like I see numbers. I don’t know what any of that means. Uh or like what’s good, what’s bad, but like do you know driver club speed as opposed to like wedge? Like what’s a good speed for somebody? Well, again, it it’s going to depend a little bit on your level and all those different things, but a rough idea of some of the averages would be that on the PJ tour, it it you know, if you go back a few years, it used to be 113 miles an hour club speed was the average, but it’s been ticking up about a mile an hour per year for the last handful of years. So, I think we’re now at like 116 or 17 is the average. 116 or 117 thing in that ballpark. If you were to take the top 10 in the world, it’s a bit quicker because by and large the best players in the world hit it a little bit further. That’s just kind of how that works on the LPJ tour. So for any ladies out there, I think the Tur average is kind of somewhere in the 90s. Low lowish 90s is the average. So, you know, realistically for your am amateur golfer, if you swing it over 100, you’re pretty much in the quick bracket. Okay. All right. I got some work to do. I think I think I was I was in the 90s. That is with driver. That is a driver. Yeah. Yeah. I figured that was the driver. Um, I would also throw into that though that if you take the long drive guys, I they keep pushing it so I don’t know where it is, but I know I have seen a video of some of those guys cracking out about 160 160 like 6 160 club speed. So wow. Now I I say this to people quite well semi often is that yes they are not professional golfers in the sense of competing and playing in tournaments but generally they’re all normally scratch golfers whatever because you can’t hit a ball that far without being able to hit the middle and if you can hit the middle at that speed you norally athletic and everything else but that kind of shows to me that is what a human a human’s potential is number speedwise. So, you know, by and large, most pro golfers are pretty slow, if you know what I mean. Relative human potential is. But it is a little bit like comparing the 100 meter sprint time of a marathon runner to a sprinter. You know, they’re kind of But, you know, to me, what it signals is that, you know, from a pro game side of the things, the young guys coming out are just going to keep getting faster because the potential is there. We’re nowhere near reaching the limit. So, you know, I kind of average between 128 and 132 myself, which puts me as one of the longest pros in the world, but like there are going to be more and more guys pushing towards that 140 mark. Like that’s what’s that’s what’s coming. That’s what’s coming next. And is that based on like more knowledge in terms of training, nutrition, recovery, all that? Um, I think a little bit of that. I think when I was a kid, I was always really interest I’m a very mathsy type of person. So, I’ve always been very interested in statistics and numbers and stuff. And, uh, Mark Broady is a a stats guy, came up with a lot of the golf stats stuff. And he wrote a book called Every Stroke Counts. And he his underlying message was that the number one measure of a golfer’s potential is how far they hit the ball. Huh. Across all handicap levels, there is a direct correlation. The further you hit the ball, the lower your handicap will be. I mean, it does make sense. If you can hit 350 and the the the greens at 400, you’re chipping 40 or 50 as opposed to then having to that’s like obviously there’s a few other aspects to it, but yeah, if you hit it 180 yards and you can’t reach the green and two, you’re going to not score as well as someone hitting a wedge. It’s just kind of a little bit of common sense, but you know, it definitely between that and a coach I had when I was younger who just told me hit as hard as I could and we’ll straighten you up later on. I very much took those two things to heart. And you know, I wasn’t always the straightest hitter of the ball when I was a kid, but it went a long way. So then as I got a bit better at golf, I learned better to control it. But, you know, it’s kind of like it’s like having a really big engine in a car. If you have the big engine and the power, you can kind of improve everything else, but if you have a one liter engine in there, you know, you’re never really going to get anywhere. There’s only so much you’re doing. That makes sense. That makes perfect sense. Um, and I did have one more question for you, and this this stemmed from um playing on Saturday. Um, I actually I I wanted to get a video of my swing to have you analyze it, but I I don’t want to I I don’t actually have it ready to pull up, which is probably better for everybody in involved. But my buddy just got he got fitted for clubs, got a brand new set of clubs, and he probably went from driving on average like 2 to 215, he hit one 285. Is is are clubs able to make that much of a difference? I mean, that was as long as she’s probably hitting on average about 250 with the new clubs. So, again, it does depend a little bit on just how far away your current set are from your idea. Yeah, they were borrowed from somebody else who’s a little taller. And no, 100%. If you have a set that’s just completely wrong for you, there is really no way of knowing you could just gain an awful lot of distance. Like personally for me, because I’m always kind of being fit or at least I’m keeping an eye on stuff myself, like you got the best club builder here with the best club fitter and stuff. Maybe we eek out like five yards because I’m already pretty much optimal in what I’m using. So it will depend a little bit I think more so than even like purely the distance side of things like if you’re like golf clubs are built to try and meet the needs of the average person that they’re going to aim at the middle of the bell curve. So the closer you are to the bell curve in terms of height, speed, all those things, the better the chance that if you buy something off the racket will fit you. If you’re a big strong guy with a load of speed, you know, you’re probably going to need some clubs built a bit longer because you’re really tall. or if you’re really strong, then you’re unfortunately probably going to have to pay a little bit more to get the, you know, the upgraded chafts and stuff because by and large the whole the reason they’re more expensive is because they can get more stable, stronger material at the same weight and that’s more expensive just like carbon fiber in a car versus, you know, using plastic or aluminium or whatever. So, you know, if you’re really strong guy, you’re probably going to have to pay more. If you’re swinging at 85 miles an hour, you’re not going to see the benefits because you don’t need that extra stiffness and stuff. So, I do recommend everyone gets fitted. I don’t think you need to go and spend $1,000 on a driver, though. Even if you just figure out your basic specs, you can still figure out from there. You know what? There’s a sale on at PJ Supertore. They’re selling off last year’s driver. or it just so happens it has the right shaft in it for me or something pretty close. You know, you don’t have to buy the most expensive gear. You can get stuff secondhand. Like there’s some really good deals we found on like eBay. Do be really careful. There is counterfeit stuff. There is fake stuff. Try look at the sellers reviews and ratings and all that sort. Um, but like you can find stuff in your specs that maybe someone else used and didn’t like. Or maybe you’ll like there are guys out there who’ll just buy the new driver every time it’s released even if it doesn’t go further. They want the new shiny toy. Yeah, I get it. People like new shiny toys, but you know, you can capitalize on that. But, you know, you absolutely need to make sure the club’s at least the right length and the lie angle. Langle is literally the angle the shaft comes out of the head is correct. If those two things are wrong on your irons and stuff, you’re just going to end up making compensations and stuff to allow for that. And it’s going to hinder your ability to get better because you don’t know what’s your fault and or what’s the clubs being wrong for you. So, what I’m hearing from you is I can blame my clubs for all of my bad shots. All right, done. Done. David Kerry said it. In my world, uh the phrase we use is ABC. Always blame the Caddy. I’ll I’ll ABC and always blame the clubs. I’ll do that. Exactly. It works too. Although I think in fairness, I think when you do have a caddy on the bag, you kind of universally will end up to agree that if it’s a distance error, you can blame the caddy. If it’s a line error, he didn’t have much to do with that. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. All right. Well, David, I really really appreciate you taking the time to uh hop on here with me. Uh definitely an easy conversation to have. I appreciate your knowledge and everything. No problem at all. That was fun. And if you ever find yourself in Massachusetts and you want to feel real good about your golf game, we’ll go we’ll go play around together. It’s okay. I think by the looks of you, we can call by the gym on the way back and then you’ll feel really good about your lifting. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. All right. Well, thank you everybody for listening. If you enjoyed it, please uh give a follow. David, how do people get in touch with you? Is Tik Tok the best way? Yeah, Tik Tok’s probably the best. Um, you’ll find me pretty much everywhere if you just search David Kygolf. Um, I think it’s at David Kyolf 57 on YouTube, but I’m pretty sure you still find me if you just look up David Cary Golf. All right. Well, I’ll find you. I’ll throw all the links in the description and everything so people can so people can and check out your stuff. And I I honestly it’s a good watch. He’s always on there. He’s very very uh engaging with the audience. So you can definitely see David a lot more. So all right. Well, thank you again everybody. I appreciate you all stopping in. And David, thank you for taking the time. No problem at all. [Music]
