Power players in their own world

By Jeremy Chapman

While sad golf junkies like me were setting alarm clocks so as not to miss even one drive of the Hong Kong Open coverage, under the floodlights at the Winstar Casino resort in Thackerville, Oklahoma, big Tim Burke was celebrating his second World Long Drive title.

The 6ft 6in Floridian’s puny 394-yard lash was still good enough to beat surprise finalist Jeremy Easerly, who could only get it out there a pathetic 386.

But Easerly wouldn’t have been thereif hot favourite Jamie Sadlowski, a Canadian who regularly thumps it well over 400, had managed to get even one of his drives within the confines of the 60-yard-wide grid in his allotted time in their semi-final.

Sadlowski, another two-time champion, is a freak because he’s only 12st and built more for speed than power. The secret of his success is that being a lefty at ice hockey he can hit a golf ball 300 yards that way round. In effect, he possesses two ‘right’ wrists.

CBS commentator Gary McCord says Jamie’s exceptional length – he has a personal best of 445 yards and, in a Hawaii shootout with Bubba Watson, smashed him by 60 yards (407 to 347) – is “because he’s figured out how to move his muscles in time and space faster than the big guys”.

I mention all this because if you put most of these guys on a golf course in a PGA Tour environment they couldn’t make a cut… or even get near it.

The two exceptions were Lon Hinkle, the 1980 champion who won three times on the PGA Tour, and Dennis Paulson, world long-drive king with 323 yards in 1985 and play-off conqueror of the great David Duval 15 years later at the Buick Classic when ‘DD’ was at the height of his powers and fighting out for the world No.1 spot with Tiger.

Ironically, powerhouse Paulson’s lone PGA victory came on one of the Tour’s shortest courses, the 6,722-yard Westchester Country Club!

A few years before Paulson won his long-drive title, I was privileged to play with the very first champion, a guy called Evan ‘Big Cat’ Williams (not to be confused with Cleveland ‘Big Cat’ Williams, butchered in three rounds by Muhammad Ali for the world heavyweight title in 1966) in a very plush pro-am in Morocco hosted by the golf-mad King Hassan II.

One or two of the lowly journos covering the event were invited to take part and Williams was there not for his golf prowess, but because he’d just hammered it 359 yards to retain his WLD crown.

The first thing he did was to apologise profusely to the three amateurs that he’d be teeing off with a four-wood because the only driver he had that would keep the ball within the confines of the Royal Dar Es Salam course had cracked and was not fit for purpose.

Fair play, he wasn’t the worst golfer in the world, just a little clumsy around the green. I could usually get past his four-wood with my two best and, if memory serves, the Cat got it round in 74 on a championship layout.

Incidentally, the worst pro I ever encountered was a Welshman teaching  the game at a German driving-range who brought two of his virtual beginners to a pro-am at Estoril and I was asked to make up the team. He shot exactly 50-over-par for 54 holes on a very short-but-tricky par-69 layout and, surprise, surprise, we finished last. Ah, but he ‘playze such vunderfull golf at home’, crooned one of the Germans who clearly regarded him as God. More oh-mi-God that week.

Only one Brit has been crowned World Long Drive champ, and that was Joe Miller, an 18st giant from Barnet, whose winning blow of 414 yards with a 3-degree X-HOT Callaway driver did the trick three years ago.

Miller, by the way, holds the record for the longest unassisted drive anywhere, a 560-yarder on his local course, although Carl Cooper’s caddie claimed his man had hit it 787 in the 2002 Texas Open – the distance, he said, from the tee shot at the third to where it came to rest by the 12th tee after careering along a cart path and veering on to an unpaved maintenance road without going OB.

So where’s all this taking us? Just to put most club golfers’ obsession and fascination with length and sheer brute power into perspective. Why do you think John Daly made (and lost) so much money? Only because from the time he burst on the scene by winning the 1991 USPGA right through to 2003, he was the ONLY player clocking over 300 yards on the long-driving table. No wonder every sponsor wanted him. The Wild Thing was a sideshow who put bums on seats. The big surprise is that people still flock to watch him, even though there are plenty who knock it past him now.

But length isn’t golf. Zach Johnson demonstrated that at The Open and Jordan Spieth, no monster either, wrapped up two Majors (almost four) en route to becoming world No.1.

’Twas ever thus, at least until Tiger came along. Legends Bobby Locke and Peter Thomson won nine Opens between them without getting within hailing distance of the longest drivers of their day, men like big Dave Thomas.

Locke actually only carried it around 220 through the air but, with his exaggerated hook-spin, the ball went a fair bit further than that. Besides, he liked going first with his approaches to put opponents under pressure.

And did you know you need to go down to 15th place and the name of Thomas Pieters on the European Tour power table before you find a winner? No need for us shorties to give up the ghost just yet!