This record-setting golf-club throw will fill raging golfers with envy

Club-throwing is no one’s idea of acceptable on-course behavior, but it does happen.

Ask Rory McIlroy, who at Doral years ago hurled a 3-iron into a pond on the 8th hole, which surely emboldened hybrid-makers everywhere. Or repeat offender John Daly, whose most memorable toss may have come at the 2015 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, where in a fit of frustration he drowned an iron in Lake Michigan. Or Matt Every, whose hurling form at the 2019 Byron Nelson was so textbook that you couldn’t help but marvel at it.

Indeed, just as swinging a club requires sound technique, so too does throwing one — assuming, that is, you really want to send it. A couple of years ago, in a video that appeared on LPGA pro Danielle Kang’s Instagram feed, legendary instructor Butch Harmon broke down the finer points of club-chucking.

“Not saying I agree with it or don’t agree with it, because I’ve thrown a few,” Harmon began in the video. “But there’s an art to it.

“Technique is important — you want to have a nice windup and a nice load through the club. The madder you are, the more adrenaline you have, the further you’ll throw it. … Good wind up, move into it, and always underhand.”

Good advice, or presumably it is, because who are we to question Butch?

Which brings us to another guy with a loyal following: Tyler Toney, the 34-year-old frontman of the uber-popular stunt and trick-shot troupe, Dude Perfect. Toney and his fellow DP members have tried all manner of golf trickery in pursuit of YouTube views — perhaps you saw them play Amen Corner last year with tennis rackets and croquet mallets — but their latest video stands apart because they enlisted Rory McIlroy to help them break a handful of outlandish golf world records. A sampling of the marks:

Fastest time to hit 10 golf balls over 300 yards: 1 min 11 sec

Most putts (from 6 feet or longer) holed in a minute: 35

Farthest distance to hit and catch a golf ball: 101 feet, 6 inches

You get the idea — records you probably didn’t even know existed.

The stunt that most caught our eye, though? Yep, club-tossing, which you can check out at the 05:07 mark here:  

“This is the world’s longest club throw,” Toney says excitedly as he introduces the segment, pitching wedge in hand.  

And with that he takes roughly a 12-step run-up before spinning around, as a discus thrower does to generate power, and hurling the club side-armed down the fairway. The wedge doesn’t just fly — it flies, cutting through the air like a helicopter blade. When it finally touches down, the club immediately snaps in two.

“Luckily that was Cory’s club,” Toney jokes to the camera, referencing his Dude Perfect mate Cory Cotton.

The flight distance: an incredible 253 feet, 3 inches, which was, yep, a world record.  

For context, that’s 83 yards, or two yards longer than the 15th hole at Los Angeles Country Club played during the third round of the U.S. Open.

We don’t recommend you trying this home.

And certainly not at the course.

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As GOLF.com’s executive editor, Bastable is responsible for the editorial direction and voice of one of the game’s most respected and highly trafficked news and service sites. He wears many hats — editing, writing, ideating, developing, daydreaming of one day breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely talented and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Before grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the features editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and foursome of kids.