Eddie Hall is all about displays of strength, from winning the World’s Strongest Man title to pushing himself in increasingly demanding and bizarre workouts on his YouTube channel. In his latest video, Hall puts his strength to the test once again, but also challenges his own flexibility, hitting up the putting range to work on his swing with golfer and YouTuber Rick Shields.
Shields describes the two real criteria for a perfect golf swing as being fairly simple. “How fast can you swing a golf club, and how far can you hit the ball” is what matters most, he says. The world record for ball speed is 230 mph (for perspective, a player like Tiger Woods’ ball speed is around 175 mph), while the record for distance is in the 400 yard range.
Shields also notes that the sport used to consist of bigger guys, but now it’s predominantly leaner players. “This will be a fun experiment to see if raw power and strength can equate to distance,” he says.
“They call me the swing master,” Hall jokes, before admitting that he’s an absolute newbie who has been known to let go of the club mid-swing, as he’s just “so bloody massive in the shoulders and chest.” Shields advises that the ideal form for a swing involves rotating the shoulder underneath the chin, something Hall struggles to do due to his sheer size.
However, bulk aside, on his initial swing, Hall hits a car about 100 yards away. Point to strength. By the third try, he’s hitting 131 yards with a 73 mph club head speed. This is far from a poor performance:An average golfer who’s been playing for years would likely about hit 140 yards, with a club head speed of 74 mph and a ball speed of 97 mph.
Hall eventually switches to a longer club, feeling restricted in his movement and is having to hunch over, and is able to get up to a 180 yard distance and 118 mph ball speed with a five-iron before moving up to a driver. While a regular driver is 48 inches, Shields presents Hall with a 50-inch model which would be illegal in a professional competition—but should theoretically be able to funnel more power into the swing.
After repeated swings with the driver, Hall’s furthest hit is 210 yards, with a club head speed of 107 mph (an approximate ball speed of 160 mph)—no mean feat for somebody with a vastly different build from your average golfer. “There’s actually a ton of rotational power conversion that has to go into this vs. the standard sagittal plane power production that guys like Hall are used to,” says Men’s Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S.
“I wouldn’t say I’m an immobile guy, but when I’m all bunched up aiming on that one spot, accuracy’s coming into it, I’m not so good with those sorts of things,” says Hall. “If you asked me to just one-handed smash a golf ball, I reckon I could do better with just one hand and just smash it than with two, because then I’d have the mobility.”
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