2008 Australian Long Drive Champion

Crikey! This guy hits a golf ball a long way. Matt McDonald is Australia’s 2008 long drive champion and he’s just represented Australia at the World Long Drive Championships in Las Vegas.

Matt’s winning drive back in September was a 303 metre smash into a headwind! His father, Wayne took out the Seniors division to make it a father-son double.(pictured). Here’s a report on Matt’s win straight from the highly acclaimed Victor Harbour Times. The event took place in September at the wonderful Adventure Golf in Penrith (strangely enough) and by winning the event, Matt was able to represent Australia in Las Vegas at the Long Driving World Champs last week.

Matt did us proud but didn’t quite have his best with him in Las Vegas which has a head to head matchplay format taking your best drive from 6 attempts. The drive must not go out of the designated landing area. The eventual winner, Jamie Sadlowski hit a new world record, 418 yards or 382 metres!!!

The most interesting thing for me is the details in this very specific golf skill. Matt for instance takes with him a dozen or so drivers and breaks many driver heads when practising as his swing speed tops 200 km/h! The drivers have lofts of around 4 degrees with ultra (XXXX) flexy shafts which would be almost non-hittable to many of us. All competitors used a Pinnacle Gold FX Long golf ball. It’s apparently very hard and runs a long way.

I wonder what these guys are like around the greens?

*Photo courtesy of the Victor Harbour Times.

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