MGS 5 Questions: RE/MAX Long Drive Champ Jamie Sadlowski

[GolfSpy Barbajo]

 

There's “I'm the longest in my weekend foursome” long, and then there's testosterone-laden youth long. Neither are long compared to PGA long.

 

And then there Jamie Sadlowski long. 

 

Jamie Sadlowski long is otherworldly. The 27-year-old Canadian from St. Paul, Alberta is a two-time World Long Drive Junior Champion, as well as a back-to-back RE/MAX WLD Open Division champion and, as a 20-year old, the youngest champ ever.

 

Jamie has been in the final 8 of the RE/MAX championship for 8 straight years, broke the simulator on the Golf Channel (twice) and in an effort to show he's no one-trick pony, made the cut in his very first attempt on the web.com tour. 

 

MyGolfSpy was fortunate enough to catch up with Jamie for a 5 Questions Segment, and he shared with us the difficulty of transitioning between Long Drive competitions and “tournament” golf.

 

 

 

MyGolfSpy 5 Questions: In the Long Drive world, you have one big competition each year, plus a few smaller competitions. How do you fit in tournament golf and how hard is the transition?

 

Jamie Sadlowski:  Anything that I've played in over the last four or five years, which are only 3 web.com events and, I believe, 2 PGA Tour of Canada events, so I've only played in 5 events over the past 5 years, which are through sponsor exemptions. 

 

I've always enjoyed playing, and I've been fortunate with how my long drive career has panned out. That's helped me get into some tournaments and dabble in some tour golf. But at the end of the day playing one or two tournaments a year isn't going to qualify me as a tour player. I've made two or three cuts, and one of two cuts on the PGA Tour of Canada. It's been fun to do but at the end of the day Long Drive is still kind of my world and doing corporate outings is how I make my living.

 

It's not really a transition, but I've always wanted to play tour golf. As a young boy I always wanted to be a PGA tour player, but it's not easy for me to just walk away from Long Drive because it's been something I've been very successful at. I've made the final eight for eight straight years and I've won two world championships in the Open Division, two in the Junior World Championships, and my living is doing corporate outings, doing 50 to 60 corporate outings a year where I know it's guaranteed money. All I have to do is show up and it's a guaranteed paycheck, where Tour Golf it's obviously not.  It doesn't matter what tour is it, whether it's Latin America, the PGA of Canada, web.com – I mean it's just not easy to get a tour card. 

 

So for me to walk away from a good business model is something that I've struggled with for a while. My agent and I talk about it every year – are we going to Tour School or are we going to book more outings? There's talk of me going down to Q School this fall and giving it a go and slowing down my corporate schedule a little bit so I can actually put the practice in. I'm not a big fan of just showing up and playing – I want to be prepared. That's kind of how I've approached my Long Drive career as well. I train hard and make sure I'm 100% ready before I do anything.

 

 

 

MGS 5Q's: So you'd rather qualify on merit than by name?

 

JS: Oh yeah, absolutely! I don't like taking spots from guys who are playing the tour for a living; it's how they feed their family. If I was 100% committed to playing tour golf and I was able to get a bunch of sponsor's exemptions, I wouldn't turn them down. But I don't like taking from guys if that's their living and they have status on the tour – I don't like stealing spots from them. I've been given the opportunity to play in a few and fortunate to play fairly decent for someone who hasn't dedicated their life to actually playing golf.

 

 

MGS 5Q's: That leads me to my next question – you've played in 5 “real” tournaments. As you've gone through the tournament, what do you see are the biggest differences between Long Drive – where your job is to hit the hell out of the ball in one direction – and the web.com or PGA of Canada Tour?

 

JS: There's one thing you can't teach and it's how to play competitive rounds of golf. Just about every one of those players has played collegiate golf, something I haven't played, and I think the experience alone of having to grind out four days of solid golf is something that I haven't really learned how to do yet.

 

I've played maybe a handful of four-day tournaments and my mind isn't really programmed for that. It's very different – you can't let a bad hole get to you. In Long Drive you can have one bad swing, but there's 5 more golf balls left so you can say to yourself “hey, there's no issue here, I'll just hit one of the next five.”

 

When I'm out there on the tour it's very different. You can't let your highs get too high and your lows get too low. But it just something that I'm not accustomed to, playing four days of golf.  People don't understand how hard that is. 

 

Playing a Saturday-Sunday pin placement on any tour isn't easy. People just think, “Oh, you played bad on the weekend,” but tour greens are very different setups. My buddies back at home go “oh, you didn't play very well on the weekend,” but I tell them they don't understand tour speed greens with pins tucked in the corners. It's very, very different than playing a Muni on Sunday in your Men's Open.

 

Even when I played in Bogata (Colombia) in February, that golf course was meant to play firm and fast. We had a bunch of rain and we had a lot of back pin placements, and the greens all had back to front slope. For a high-spin player like myself, I had to be fairly creative because I hit the ball so high and create a lot of spin.  So there's a lot of ¼ to ¾ shots – it's very different from Long Drive where you try to launch it 16* and try to hit it to the Moon. You have to be very creative on tour.

 

 

MGS 5Q's: When you're playing on one of these tours, do the other players want to see you hit the ball?

 

JS: Playing the Tour golf that I've played, I think it's helped me gain respect from tour players. And I've always had a great respect and appreciation for what they can do. And I've never been a guy that will step on the range and say “Hey, boys, watch this” while I'm warming up.

 

But I've always had guys come around and watch me though, which is a pretty neat feeling because PGA Tour players don't stop to watch just anybody. You're talking about the best players in the world, the best ball-strikers in the world. I've been fairly fortunate to receive some great compliments from guys who say “hey, you actually have a great golf swing for a Long Drive guy,” or “your ball-striking's fairly good.”

 

One thing that's in my favor is being a normal-sized human. I'm 5'11” and 170 pounds. You don't expect someone of my stature to create ball speeds of 220 MPH or a club head speed of 150 MPH, I mean you'd expect that from a guy who's 6'8.” So having the ability for normal people to say “he's normal, he's a normal sized guy” that can just create a lot of speed is kinda cool.

 

MGS 5Q's: 150 MPH swing speed????

 

JS: Yeah, when we get ‘er going in competition we'll get there or very close to that, for sure. That's a lot of violence!

 

 

MGS 5Q's: You just signed on with Arccos – how is that helping you with your endeavors?

 

JS: As far as golf goes there's nothing that compares to it on the market. There are a few other products that are trying to do what they're doing, but as far as statistics go, it's right in front of you, it's on your cell phone. You can check your stats, you can check your putts, your greens in regulation – it'll obviously help you become a better player.

 

I used it just the other day and as far as greens in regulation, putts, and proximity to the hole – it's stats that you don't need to go down to your computer and look at.  You can have your phone on during your round and analyze what you're doing. If you watch a guy like Billy Horschel, who's also with Arccos, he uses it for all his practice rounds. I was able to talk with him when I was at the CVS Charity Classic in Rhode Island and he said the same thing. As far as practice rounds go, he knows exactly what's going on; his misses, whether it's 52% right and whatever left – he knows all his numbers and can dial everything in as far as clubs go, what his misses are, tendencies and all that. It's a very neat system.

 

For amateur players I think it's great. If they're standing in the middle of the fairway and they don't know whether it's a 7 or a 6-iron, all that is gauged by Arccos. It tells how far every single club goes, how far they fly their 7-iron or how far their driving distance is. It's very neat and the greatest thing is anytime you want to look at any of your stats, it's all on your cell phone while you're playing. It's in the moment so as you hit a shot you can check.  I mean, I like to see the distances that I'm hitting it off the box. When I'm hitting a 2-iron I'm hitting it anywhere from 260 yards to 300 yards, so I kinda like to know how far it's going, and how I'm swinging it.

 

MGS 5Q's: I gotta ask – 475 yards? Seriously? How do you do that?

 

JS: (Chuckling) I believe that was last year in qualifying rounds. We had a little bit of weather blow in and out of 6 balls I think I hit 4 out of the back of the grid which is 475 yards. I mean, they were obviously wind-aided, but on a dead-still day the elite hitters – there's probably like 5 or 10 of us – will hit it 400 yards. If you have some wind blow in, 480 is very achievable, but if that switches around then 380 is a big number.

 

Everything is based off weather. Any time you see someone hitting it 450 yards, the first question is wind direction or elevation. Doing the math on it, if your ball speed's 215 and your club head speed is 145, then there's no way on Earth that ball's going to 450 yards on a dead still day.

 

Weather, temperature – all that plays a big factor in what we do.

 

 

MGS 5Q's: 145 MPH club head speed – that's mind-boggling? Obviously there's strength, there's flexibility – how do you hone that? What are the keys?

 

JS: For myself, it's very natural. I played hockey left-handed and from an early age I was creating lag left handed in hockey. In the off-season, which for me was summer, playing golf I'd create a lot of lag and club head speed going right-handed. So I've always been able to create speed – throwing, hitting, anything that involved speed I've always been able to do it.

 

Being born with flexibility, hand-eye coordination, I mean, it's really everything that goes into it. You can't just do one better than the other. I could teach someone how to put the club in the right positions and to do what I do, but at the end of the day I honestly believe that I was born with the gift of speed. You can only teach so much, so it's really a blessing of speed, a God-given ability.

 

 

MGS 5Q's: With that, what tips would you give to, ohh, I don't know, let's just hypothetically make up a golfer - a 55-year old 7 handicap, who looks and sounds a lot like me, 205 pounds on a good day – what tips would you give that hypothetical, imaginary golfer to help him get a few more yards?

 

JS: You know, I used to tell people that speed training is great, so try a little heavier club, then a little lighter, which is still great.  Now I've started training with a company from Edmonton, which is a couple of hours away from where I live, and I'm now a firm believer in mobility and having your body work better. You can hit the gym all you want, but until you're mobile enough and you can get the club in the right positions and you have that X-factor of your lower body fighting your upper, if you're restricted you cannot create more speed.

 

I don't care what you do, you're body needs to work fluidly. That's something I've become a real big believer in over the last couple of years. I've always been a pretty flexible guy and I've always been able to put the club in positions that most people can't. When I walked in there they went “Man, you're locked up. Your lower back, your hips are tight. You've lost range of motion.” So I'm a huge believer in making your body more mobile.

 

From there you go to speed training with heavier and lighter clubs. You swing each 10 times. Go heavy, then light and then go back to your driver – that's a great technique. Flip your driver upside down and counterbalance it so the weight's in your hands – it allows you to swing faster and it kinda teaches you to crack the whip – you gotta listen to that “whoosh” sound at the bottom of the swing or in front of the ball, not behind it.  So after mobility, I would think that a little bit of speed training would be the easiest way to create a couple more miles an hour.

 

Well, I know that's more than 5 Questions, but Jamie was driving through the Canadian prairie during our interview and, well, you know how it is when you get to talking golf….

 

Jamie Sadlowski web page – click here

 

[revkev]

Great read - thanks!

[Blade]

Great interview! Thanks for posting it!

[evershady]

That's fantastic. Those guys are crazy long.

[mizuno_lover]

I saw this guy break the simulator on the Golf Channel.  It was pretty funny but pretty expensive too.  I think the host actually challenged him to a long hitting contest on the sim and didn't even get to hit a ball  

 

The interview was pretty interesting given the very one dimensional aspect of long driving contest golf.  I'd love to see him really get into tour golf.  The entertainment factor would be amazing.  Pair him up with Bubba or DJ and watch 'em bounce off each other all day.

[Kenny B]

I watched Jamie a few years ago at the Mercedes at Kapalua where they were having fun with the long driving pros before the tournament began.  He was way past everyone.  

 

If he is hitting a 2-iron 300, why would he ever hit a driver when playing a course?  I've seen him hit driver, most of the time it is not "in the grid."

[hckymeyer]

I watched Jamie a few years ago at the Mercedes at Kapalua where they were having fun with the long driving pros before the tournament began. He was way past everyone.

 

If he is hitting a 2-iron 300, why would he ever hit a driver when playing a course? I've seen him hit driver, most of the time it is not "in the grid."

I'm guessing the LD setup is different than his tournament setup. Just playing a shorter driver would up the accuracy considerably. Plus he wouldn't just be trying to hit it as far as he can every time.

[Kenny B]

I'm guessing the LD setup is different than his tournament setup. Just playing a shorter driver would up the accuracy considerably. Plus he wouldn't just be trying to hit it as far as he can every time.

 

 

I understand that, but except for a few holes on most courses that he would play, 300 off the tee would be plenty.  Sure, Bubba, DJ, and others can bust it out to 350 occasionally, and I would think Jamie would do it when the risk was low, but if his 2 iron is consistent why not play it most of the time?

 

I find it really hard to back down my swing speed, even as slow as I swing.    I can imagine that Jamie's slower swing speed would take some getting used to in order to play consistently.

[revkev]

We have a long drive Guy who is a practice facility member at our club, Frank Consavage. It's fun to watch him hit it though mostly he's working on playing real golf. His real golf driver set up is very different from his long drive set up.

 

I've noticed that his ball flight is not that consistent. When you watch Brittany every shot looks and sounds the same. Bad shots on the range are exceedingly rare on the range. Consavage is not all over the place accuracy wise but his trajectory and ball flight need lots of work if ever he hopes to make money playing real golf. I'd love a bit of his distance but when I'm playing well my ball flight is more consitent than his.

[KCLeo12]

These guys are awesome and most are really good guys. I went in 2009 in the Military Division and it was a blast.

 

Rev I think you mean Trevor Consavage he travels around doing charity outings all over the country and he is one of the top trick shot artists also.