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Long Drive
Results & Reports
16th & 17th June 2007
RE/MAX Long Drive Championship of Spain
La Manga Club, Murcia
Round Two of the RE/MAX European Long Drive Championship got underway last Saturday at the fabulous La Manga Resort in Murcia, Spain. The event, unique in that it was spread over two days, attracted a strong field, including, for the first time this season, Adam ‘Stinger’ Stacey, Christian ‘The Viking’ Sterning and Dan ‘The Ukrainian’ Konyk. Despite a stiff right-to-left, and occasionally helping, breeze making finding the near perfect grid difficult, four competitors managed to smash drives over 350 m (383 yds), including, most notably, Stacey and Gressel who wooed the sizeable gallery with monster bombs of 366 m (400 yds) and 367 m (401 yds), respectively. Paul ‘Hammer Time’ Glazier produced a best drive of 327 m (358 yds), which saw him qualify for the finals in eighth spot.
Sunday saw the top 16 players from Saturday’s qualifying round battle it out for the title of RE/MAX Long Drive Champion of Spain. The weather and grid conditions were similar to the previous day and the distances produced showed surprisingly little ill-effect from the previous evening’s social activities. Glazier found himself in a tough quarter-final group, which included Uotila and Sterning, and could only manage 326 m (357 yds) to finish just outside the top two automatic qualifying spots. A better effort of 334 m (365 yds) in the ‘last chance’ round saw the big-hitting Devonian safely through to the semi-finals, but virtually identical drives of 332 m (363 yds) by Glazier and Edblad, left the pair with a nervous wait to see who would advance through to the final. Fortunately, the dreaded measuring tape was not required to separate them as their respective drives turned out to be the fifth and sixth longest in the semi-final, and both, with some relief, proceeded to the final by virtue of wildcards.
The final was tense. Glazier set the benchmark with a marvellous drive of 342 m (374 yds) with his very last ball. Edblad followed that with six out of bounds and Uotila hit a below par 312 m (341 yds). Stacey got close to taking the lead but came up just short with 339 m (371 yds) and it looked like ‘Hammer Time’ was odds on favourite for taking the title before Gresel stepped up and ripped one 354 m (387 yds) in what was an awesome display of raw power hitting. Konyk made a valiant attempt at superseding both Glazier and Gresel, but could not quite pull it off, hitting only 341 m (373 yds). Gresel was eventually crowned RE/MAX Long Drive Champion of Spain—his maiden victory on the Long Driver’s of Europe (LDE) European Long Drive tour.
Glazier said: “I am delighted with my second place at the weekend particularly as I wasn’t performing at my very best. I started off slowly and just did enough on Saturday but managed to get some momentum going on Sunday. The wind direction didn’t really suit me all weekend but fortunately I managed to turn a few over in the final, much to my surprise.”
Glazier’s runner-up finish earned him eight Order of Merit points to go with the seven he picked up in Austria a fortnight earlier. Summarising the weekend’s competition, Glazier said, “There were some class-acts in the final and I am pleased to come away from Spain on top of the Order of Merit and ranked number one in Europe after Round two. Stef deserved to win after that strike—I think it must have carried past where my ball finished!”
The RE/MAX European Long Drive Championship moves on to the Marco Simone Golf Club in Rome next weekend for the RE/MAX Long Drive Championship of Italy. Paul is still looking for sponsors to support what is a very hectic but exciting long driving schedule this summer, so if any individuals or companies would like to get involved, please contact Paul at longdrive@dgcc.co.uk as soon as possible.
For comprehensive results, please download the results sheet, brought to you courtesy of Long Drivers of Europe.
