Post-COVID World of Pro Long Drive Competitions
December 2, 2020
Like many professional and amateur sporting events around the world, pro long drive and amateur long drive competitions have been forced to deal with numerous challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic. Although many people are quick to say 2020 will be a year to forget, it will certainly be a season marked with an asterisk denoting the encumbered accomplishments of those who were able to compete. Globally, golf fans will long remember the somber Friday morning press conference on March 13, when PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced to the world that the 47th edition of The Players Championship at Sawgrass was cancelled after first round leader Hideki Matsuyama equaled the TPC course record at nine under par. Suddenly, all the rumors about the spread of coronavirus to the United States took on a new reality and pro golfers scrambled to make travel arrangements leaving behind the biggest purse in professional golf history with a prize pool of $15 million.
Fortunately for the tour players who took to the course at the TPC, the Professional Golfers Association is a well-funded sports sanctioning body and each professional golfer who competed in the tournament received an equal share of 50% of the purse money. Optimistic that America’s leading epidemiologists would be able to contain the novel coronavirus, the PGA only cancelled the next three weeks of scheduled tour events leading up to the year’s first major, the Masters. However, the TPC would be the last time in 2020 that the general population of tour fans would be allowed to attend a professional event. Moreover, the 84th edition of the Masters Tournament, which is traditionally played in the spring when the azaleas and dog woods are in full bloom, was held in November without spectators in attendance. Unfortunately, the pandemic would continue to take its toll on many businesses in 2020 and had a severe impact on pro long drive competitions when the World Long Drive Association (WLDA) announced in June that it was suspending the sport’s longest-running pro long drive tour.
The history of pro long drive predates the current sanctioning bodies and began at the PGA Championship in 1949 at Hermitage Country Club in Richmond, Virginia, when Chick Harbert’s drive on a designated hole out-distanced the rest of the field. Fans embraced the pro long drive event, and it became a mainstay traditionally held on Tuesdays during PGA Championship week. A pioneer of the sport, Evan “Big Cat” Williams set the record for the PGA Championship Long Drive events with a 366-yard tee shot at Tanglewood Golf Club in Clemmons, North Carolina. In 1995, the Long Drivers of America (LDA) was established, and the Golf Channel began airing the World Long Drive Championship in 2013. The new concept sports network (part of NBC Sports Group) branded its October programming as part of “Long Drive Month” with the pro long drive finals held annually in Las Vegas. In the fall of 2015, the WLDA (which was owned and operated by the Golf Channel) announced its acquisition of the World Long Drive Championship and moved the finals to the WinStar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Oklahoma.
Faced with numerous pandemic-related safety concerns as well as unexpected travel restrictions multiple entities, like the Pro Long Drive Association (PLDA) and Ultimate Long Drive™ (ULD™) with its Xtreme Long Drive™ (XLD™) Tour, have emerged to ensure pro long drive events will continue to move forward in the post-pandemic world. With the majority of the 2020 PDLA events cancelled due to covid-19, professional long drive competitors were able to compete in a 2020 National Long Drive Championship in Memphis TN in November. Defending PDLA World Champion Kyle Berkshire won the men’s open division and pro long drive veteran Mike Bauman took top honors in the master’s division. As is the case with most sports, the real future lies in the grass-roots programs that begin with thousands of budding amateurs who compete in local and regional tournaments. Currently, the Amateur Long Drive™ (ALD™) championship series (a property of the ULD™) has multiple long drive tournaments and four regional major qualifiers scheduled through its amateur leagues in the United States and Canada.
It should be noted, out of respect for the pro long drivers from the European Long Drive Games (ELDA) and long drivers from other countries who were not allowed to travel due to the pandemic, none of the sanctioning organizations crowned a 2020 Pro Long Drive World Champion. So, if you think you have what it takes to accurately and consistently launch drives 450-yards or more, it’s time to head to the driving range and get ready for the 2021 long drive tour of your choice. Although we now have a much better understanding of living with the coronavirus and the vaccines that are soon to be released are expected to restore some level of normalcy, bookmark this website as your source for pro long drive, amateur long drive, and European long drive tour event schedules and news.