Drive For Show, Putt For Dough

His brother Rick Dempsey is perhaps the better-known athlete, but Pat Dempsey has an even bigger swing than baseball’s 1983 World Series MVP. At about six-foot four inches tall and maybe 240 pounds, Pat Dempsey is built like a brick caddie shack and swings a golf club like Conan The Barbarian swings a two-handed sword.

Pat and I met a couple of years ago at a charity golf tournament where he was hitting drives for charity. For twenty dollars Pat would launch one into the stratosphere for you. Playing with a foursome that was born in the middle of the last century, we were more than anxious to purchase his distance, so we coughed-up the twenty bucks and then watched Pat do his thing.

To say Pat swings hard would be like saying Steve Nash can shoot free throws. It is absolutely violent to the point of making the spectators flinch, and I know because I was the head flincher. And, when someone said that he killed that one, it didn’t seem like a metaphor. Forget the long, smooth under control swing; this was pure violence.

As a special treat, Pat also did his impression of Happy Gilmore starting his pre-shot routine by jogging toward the ball before striking his mighty blow. As the ball sailed down the fairway I secretly wondered what must it be like to scare other golfers and small children with my drive; to reach every par five in two; to carry every bunker; to laugh in the face of water hazards? If I could hit a ball like that would my wife still make me take out the trash? I think not.

As we approached our charity ball at about 365 yards out I glanced back at Pat who was lighting a celebratory cigar and laughing like Arnold Swarzenegger. “I’ll be back,” I thought I heard him shout.

With only a sand wedge left to the green and with four shots at it, you probably think we’d pitch it up there for an easy birdie, but if I recall we didn’t get a ball inside of ten feet with four chances. Save for a putt that did a 360 around the hole before falling in we almost blew the whole deal.

Pat is still hitting the long ball but now as Captain of UST’s Long Drive Team as well as a competitor in the senior division of Long Driver of America and the RE/MAX Long Drive Championship. The Team is doing really well this year with five of six team members already qualifying for the World Championship. For the record, they’re swinging UST’s V2 Long Drive shaft designed especially for long drive and other competitive gorilla activities.

I don’t have a list of future Long Driver of America Tournaments or the requirement to enter, but I bet if you pay an entry fee and go through qualifying you can join the testosterone exhibitions. However, before you quit your day job and jump out there you should know that the flat-belly record holder, better known as the Open Division, is Jason Zuback with a blast of 412+ yards. Interestingly, Zuback is also the shortest Champion standing a mere five-foot nine inches. Just for the record, Viktor Johansson is the tallest Champion at six-foot six inches. Nancy Abiecunas is the woman’s record holder with a drive of 332+ yards, and coincidentaly she is also the shortest women champion at five-foot ten inches, an inch taller than the shortest men’s record holder. The tallest lady Champion is Stacey Shinnick at six-feet two inches.

Just imagine the mixed scramble team you could put together.

The leading money winner on the Tour is Dave Gureckis with $69,350 for his entire career. That is correct; that’s his career earnings not annual. Our friend Pat Dempsey has earned $58,070 over about ten years of competing. Don’t get me wrong, fifty thousand bucks is a nice bonus, but you might want to keep the day job, which I assume all of these men and women do.

So, I guess it’s true that you drive for show and putt for dough, but there seems to be more to it than money. I think these men and women really love the thrill of hitting the big one, and come to think of it, so do most of us. What’s a lay up?

The one question that everyone always wants to ask is what kind of golfers are these guys? Pretty good, actually. Pat, like many of the other long drive guys, is a scratch golfer, but the other side of that coin is that just about every club pro in America is also a scratch golfer. So then, how good are Tiger, Phil and the rest of those guys all the way to the Nationwide Tour who play golf for a living… really, really good.

Let’s put it this way, Sean O’Hair could spot most of us an eight on seventeen at Sawgrass and still beat the crap out of most of us, and he might even win the long drive contest, as well.