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Need more oohs and ahs? Long drive contest is next
Competition begins Saturday at Tippecanoe
By Curtis Pulliam
Youngstown
In baseball, fans love to see power hitters hit one out of the park.
For golf, it’s the long drive.
The long drive has been become a big part of the PGA tour over the last 25 years.
In 2013, Phil Mickelson produced the longest drive on the PGA Tour with a 450-yard drive at the Cadillac Championship. The average drive last year for a PGA Tour player was 287.9 yards.
There is a story out there that Carl Cooper, an ex-PGA Tour player, hit a drive 787 yards in 1992 at the Texas Open.
While those numbers by professionals may be hard to reach, needless to say the ball will be flying off the tee at the inaugural Greatest Driver of the Valley contest on Saturday at Tippecanoe Country Club in Canfield at 6 p.m.
Registration is still open for the event. There is a maximum of 30 participants.
Garrett Frank, who was born in Youngstown and now lives in Boardman, played on the PGA Canadian Tour. He has taken some time off recently to start a family but remembers his time at the tee box well.
“The response was usually ‘Wow,’” said Frank, who played at one U.S. PGA Tour event in 2011, the Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia. “I remember when I played at the event you could hear the crowd ‘oohing.’ I couldn’t compare it to anything else. There was no feeling like it. It was cool to think people came out to watch you.”
Frank, whose drives average close to 300 yards depending on the course, had a simple approach when teeing it up.
“Aim small, miss small,” Frank said. “You have to have a routine and stick with it.”
The approach has worked well for Frank, who has been competing professionally for close to 15 years.
“I think to the casual fan, yes the long drive is great,” Frank said.
Frank said he believes a person’s physical makeup does not matter when it comes to hitting the ball far off the tee.
“You can be athletic and hit the ball far,” Frank said. “But it comes down to having core strength and flexibility.”
Contestant Abby Cook of Girard says hitting the ball far is the last thing on her mind when at the tee box.
“My main goal is to try and hit it straight,” Cook said. “If I try to really kill it or hit as hard as I can, that’s when I get in trouble.”
Cook said she believes if you take care of the direction, the rest will take care of itself.
“It will naturally go as far as I can hit it,” Cook said.
Cook, who started playing golf regularly five years ago, is in her first year as Hubbard High’s girls golf coach.
“I play on a league and some of the ladies are really impressed with my drives,” said Cook, who averages 200-225 yards per drive. “Sometimes they will be like ‘that’s amazing.’ That feels pretty good.”
For others, like participant Josh Zarlenga, the approach was to go full-out for power.
“Just put it in play and hit it as far as I can,” Zarlenga said about his mentality.
Contestant Kyle Gruszecki, who hits the ball consistently 300 yards, says he gets questioned when he plays with new people for the first time.
“After a couple of tee shots, they were all pretty much like ‘How do you do it?’ and ‘How are you able to hit the ball that far?’” said Gruszecki, who’s 5-foot-9. “If I play against guys that are 6-3 or 6-4, they feel a little angry [that] I can be shorter than they are and out-drive them.”
Gruszecki, of Leetonia, played baseball in high school and college. He said the long drive gives him a sense of pride about his game.
“It’s just like hitting a home run in baseball, just watching it go,” Gruszecki said. “You can feel it when you do it; it doesn’t feel like you hit the ball. It just takes off the club face and goes straight.”