About a year ago, Mitch Grassing emptied his golf bag.
He threw out his putter, used to roll the ball into the cup, his wedges, which bailed him out of trouble in the long grass, and his irons, meant to strike balls on the green with surgical precision.
But he kept his driver, the club that launches golf balls a mile down the fairway.
Leaving behind the sand traps and putting greens, Grassing is now part of the professional long drive circuit where the only thing that matters is how far he can hit the ball.
After winning the Canadian Ontario Long Drive Shootout at Tangle Creek Golf & Country Club in Barrie, Ont. with a 381-yard bomb, the second-year Carleton student will be travelling to Nevada for the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship in September.
“Everybody wants to be in this competition. It’s like a major on the PGA Tour, the only thing is that they have four majors, we have one,” Mark Wilson, Grassing’s swing coach, said.
Long drive tournaments are like golf on energy drinks. Players face off head-to-head with six chances to hit the ball on a driving range the width of a football field. The winners keep advancing in until there is a champion.
In the Canadian Ontario Long Drive Shootout, Grassing needed to defeat 64 other contestants. In Nevada, he will be teeing off against 128 competitors from around the world.
Grassing said long driving competitions are significantly different from a round of golf.
“There’s a lot more fun,” he said. “Music is playing and people are cheering. It’s a great atmosphere.”
Grassing said he was a member of the Carleton Ravens golf team in the 2013 season and has been playing traditional golf for about 10 years, which he believes gives him an inherent advantage over other drivers, despite his late start to long drive.
Grassing’s coach said his student’s smooth swing allows him to control the ball, something that other long drivers have difficulty doing.
“He has a real solid golf swing—a traditional golf swing. A lot of other guys have swings that look unorthodox, trying to get as much swing speed as possible,” Wilson explained. “There’s no question they can hit it far, but can they hit it in control?”
In a long drive competition, the most important factor is the ability to generate swing speed.
Grassing is able to swing the club at 140 miles per hour, almost 30 mp/h faster than players on the PGA Tour, which translates to about 90 to 100 yards of extra distance off the tee, according to Wilson.
Grassing credited his background in hockey as the reason for his ability to hit the ball up to 400 yards, as the motions and muscles needed to hit a good drive are similar to the ones needed to hit a slap shot.
“His speed is almost identical to the best long drive competitors in the world. He’s got the statistics to compete in Nevada,” his coach said, before talking about his pupil’s bright future.
“He’s still 19 and he’s got 10 years left of doing this stuff.”
Grassing said even though competing in the World Championship is a huge opportunity for him and he hopes to do well, his expectations for the big event are no different from any other competition.
“It’s something special,” he said in anticipation of the big event. “I’m expecting to go out there and do my best.”
