Still a long hitter at age 62 - listen to the tip about the angle!
A 496-yard drive.
Evan “Big Cat” Williams still remembers his mammoth drive at the first hole in the Thailand Open in 1977.
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“It was a par 5, about 580 yards,” Williams said. “The ball ran and I had a good wind behind me.
“I played with a Japanese man who was about 5-foot-6. I hit driver then half-wedge; he hit driver then 4-wood and 7-iron. We both made 4 (birdie). I tapped in for my (birdie) before he did; he tapped in from six inches.”
At age 62, Williams is still a big hitter, capable of 275 to 300 yards with his Titleist driver.
“(The drive) is the sex-appeal shot of golf,” says Williams, an instructor at Great Lakes Golf Center in Auburn Hills and Cracklewood Golf Club in Macomb. “Everybody likes to see the ball go a long way.”
Big start
Decades ago, the 6-6 Williams helped popularize long-drive contests. Though the 496-yard drive remains his longest recorded shot, it isn’t what earned Williams renown.
In 1974, Golf Digest magazine held a long-drive competition at Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskill Mountains in New York.
“They had a guy named Jackie dePalo on the cover and they unofficially declared him to be the longest hitter in the world,” Williams said. “At the same time, Jim Dent was the longest hitter on the PGA Tour. They wanted to see who was the longest hitter.”
Another long driver, Dick Middleton, who had the fastest recorded swing at the time, was the third contestant. A friend, stand-up comedian London Lee, convinced the contest promoter to add Williams.
“I hit it 368 (yards) in the air and spun it back two yards, so I got 366,” Williams recalls. “Dent hit it 354; DePalo I think was 331 and I can’t remember where (Middleton) ended up.”
The win launched Williams’ career and that event was the genesis of the National Long Drive Competition, which began the following year.
“I was a young assistant pro, 26 years old, and no one knew who I was, and I ended up winning that contest no one expected me to win,” Williams said.
Williams didn’t qualify for the inaugural National Long Drive contest, but won the next two years — in 1976 at Congressional in Washington (with a drive of 307 yards) and then at Pebble Beach in 1977 (353 yards).
“I set the record, which stood for about 20 years at Pebble,” Williams said. “Now they just hit it ridiculous. It’s a different era; we used wooden heads and the first graphite shafts. Now everything is so technical and the ball is different.”
Williams was an accomplished athlete and played four sports in college: golf, basketball, football and track. He played basketball at Canisius and played against the likes of Bob Lanier and Calvin Murphy.
Williams got his nickname as a sophomore in 1966 after a fight with a teammate in the locker room. It was the same night Muhammad Ali pummeled Cleveland “Big Cat” Williams in three rounds in a title bout in Houston — and after that scrape, his teammates adopted the moniker.
He later transferred to Franklin College in Indiana to play basketball and golf.
He was invited to two rookie camps — the New York for basketball and the St. Louis Cardinals for football.
“I was good enough to get invited, but not good enough to stick,” Williams joked.
Drive for show …
Williams played sparingly on the PGA Tour and Senior Tour, focusing on a long-drive career rather than touring.
“The tough thing about (attempting both) is you’re trying to play one or two events a year against guys who play every week,” Williams said. “In between, you’re trying to hit the ball 400 yards and the distance is more important than how straight it goes.”
After his first National Long Drive win, Williams got an agent and began doing clinics and appearances.
“I thought I had something I could market. I had a monopoly on long hitting, with a lot of corporate opportunities,” he said. “My three goals in a clinic were to educate, awe and entertain — and I was able to do that for more than 25 years.”
That decision helped Williams have a more flexible schedule and be available nearly any day for outings, while Tour players were limited in their schedules.
“I don’t know how good a player I would have been had I concentrated on golfing rather than long driving,” says Williams, who is married and has two adult children.
In 1979, Williams wrote a book, “You Can Hit the Golf Ball Farther,” through Golf Digest Publications.
“Golf is played by a lot of people, and I try to provide information that people want,” Williams said. “Golf knowledge is marketable. People are happy to come and see me because adding 10 yards to their drives is something people want.”
Williams says the secret to hitting long drives is the same as with most other types of shots: fundamentals.
“A good long drive hitter should have a good golf swing. The basics are very important — grip, stance, posture and motion,” Williams said. “The distance comes from being able to delay the hit and getting a proper angle.”
He notes that Jamie Sadlowski, the two-time World Long Drive champion, is just 5-foot-11, 165 pounds — so stature and strength are not prerequisites.
“People would rather be known as a long hitter than a good putter,” Williams says, “and I’ve had a lot of fun with it for a lot of years.”
Notable long drives
515 yards: Mike Austin, U.S. National Seniors Championship, Las Vegas, 1974. Austin, then 64, hit his drive 65 yards past the par-4 No. 5 hole at Winterwood Golf Course.
496 yards: Evan “Big Cat” Williams, Thailand Open, 1977.
476 yards: Davis Love III, longest in a PGA Tour event, 2004.
457 yards: J.C. Goosie, longest in a Senior Tour event, 1988.
For long drives - fire your lower body at the target
Some simple steps to getting more distance off the tee are:
1. learn to hit a draw. If you hit a fade off the tee, you are losing between 10 to 30 yards off the tee compared to a draw.
2. learn to swing in sequence - first your weight shift, then your hips, then your arms falling on the inside of the target line, and only turning your shoulders at the very last moment possible.
3. strengthen your grip - try a grip with three knuckles showing on the left hand
And to hit a draw or hit it straight, it is important to understand how the clubface impact affects the ball. And how you can control the clubface is something that can be learned. A learning program with videos and instruction manuals is this program here.
