Wednesday, May 4, 2011

World Long Drive Champion

Many of my posts have centered around the golf world.  In my introduction I laid out some of my experience that has increased my knowledge, in this post I will go a little deeper into this experience.  I began golfing at the age of 10.  This was just after I watched the 1997 Masters tournament where a young Tiger Woods took the golf world by storm winning the prestigious tournament in his first season as a professional.  My first year of golf was purely recreational, a couple of friends of mine played on the weekends with their dads and I would join them the odd time.  I became slightly more serious about the game the next summer as I bought my first membership and spent the summer biking to the golf course in the morning and spending the rest of the day there.  A couple of my good friends from hockey were also getting pretty serious about the game.  One of them was local rising junior golfer who often won the local junior tournaments.  I remember many rainy days in the clubhouse spent watching the Golf Channel's Drive, Chip and Putt.  A competition where junior golfers competed nationally and were awarded points on driving distance and chipping and putting accuracy.  I remember always thinking that if my friend were to enter one of these competitions he would win easily.  You see he grew up in a hockey family, his dad and both older brothers played some seriously good hockey and he grew up looking up to them.  As a kid he had a very frightening slapshot and this transferred very well to his golf game.  At the age of twelve he could outdrive most of the adults at our club.  As we grew older I honed in on my short game and although I could never outdrive him  my touch around the greens allowed our matches to become quite competitive.

At 14 we both began working at the golf course, whether it was picking driving range balls or attending to the proshop.  The lack of any club fixing and regripping services at the course allowed us to experiment with the trade.  At a very young age we began regripping, reshafting, and customizing customers golf clubs.  We became very good at the art and gained a very strong knowledge of golf equipment.  Once we got in to high school I started playing some very competitive golf at the provincial and national level which eventually led to my scholarship at the Colorado School of Mines.  My friend, instead, took the hockey root.  He played Junior A (the top junior league in Canada under the CHL) and moved to a new town focusing on hockey instead of golf.

The hockey career didn't last long for him however, as he soon after received his big break in golf.  He entered a long drive contest at a local course winning easily.  He then moved on through more qualifiers to eventually reach the World Junior Long Drive Championship in Mesquite, Nevada.  He placed 4th in his first year but would go on to win the junior title the following 2 years all the while setting the junior world record at 434 yards.  As soon as he was eligible to compete in the men's category he made his mark in the Long Drive world by winning consecutive world championships in his 2nd and 3rd years of eligibility.  He now makes a very lucrative living traveling around the country putting on shows at PGA tour events.

Having signed numerous endorsement deals he now spends time with golf club manufacturers customizing and designing his own golf clubs.  Apparently all of that fooling around as a kid has really paid off for him.  We still often talk about the manufacturing of clubs and I've been able to learn a lot from him in recent years.  If you ever get the chance to watch one of his shows I highly recommend it.  The things this guy does with a golf club are truly amazing and even manage to drop the jaws of the top touring professionals.

My friends name is Jamie Sadlowski and I have a learned a lot about the golf club from him.  Here's a couple videos of him.  The first his of his first World Championship win and the second is a show he did at Gary McCord's (famous golf announcer) home course in Vail, CO.
  Sean

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