Driven By Golf
A behind-the-scenes glimpse at grid painting for the World Long Drive Championship
By Mike Hebrard
Photos: Mike Hebrard
Ever wonder how far you could hit a golf ball and have an accurate way to measure the distance? Originating in 1976 as part of the PGA Championship, the World Long Drive Association hosts the World Long Drive Championship, which brings together golf’s longest hitters from around the globe. Emerging as a popular, grassroots competition, the broader sports industry also has taken notice, including ESPN proclaiming that long drive has “recently started to enter the mainstream of golf,” while Men’s Journal notes, “With the sport’s ascendant profile and ever-growing prestige, [fans should] buckle up for more high-octane action.”
In 2013, the GOLF Channel, along with networks of NBC Sports, began airing the event.
The World Long Drive Championship has produced dozens of champions in the 40+ years since the competition was first staged. Winners of the annual event (with Open, Masters, and Women’s divisions) each receive a championship belt that recognizes their place atop the sport for that year.
Welcome To The Crew
As a consultant for athletic fields, I was asked by a field paint representative if I knew who painted the grid for the event that shuttled from Mesquite, Nev., to the Las Vegas Speedway. I told him I didn’t know, but I expressed an interest in becoming involved. I had planned a trip to Dallas, Texas, for another job, and the same salesman mentioned that the competition was moved to Thackerville, Okla., just across the Red River,, and he invited me to help with the painting.
Tim Kemp of Devco Parking Lot Services was selected as the contractor. Upon meeting him, he told me to grab the machine with the black paint and start marking the grid. Well, for some reason, the paint machine had a bad hose, and it blew black paint all over me—my initiation into the Long Drive paint crew! Much like the look of a traditional football field, the grid has yard lines every 15 feet with yard marks on the outside and two up the middle about 30 feet apart, with distance numbers on the outside (football usually has 27 feet to the top of the numbers every 10 yards from the side line with numbers up the middle). Using several sets of plastic number stencils, a 2-inch outline is painted in black and later filled in with white.
Logistics Of Setup
With some of the selected venues having rolling hills and sand traps, using a traditional line painter and string method will not create a straight 4-inch line. So, a relatively new method, much like what is used at the SuperBowl and professional fields, is an aluminum sled with T handles and 4-inch gap with hand painting in between. What started as a 20-foot stencil, where you paint in between rails, went to a shorter one where one or two helpers drag it over the middle of a string. This allows the line to be painted very straight while following the contours of the fairway. To speed up the process, a paint machine with a sulky rides along the hand-pulled sled with unbelievable accuracy to create a perfect white line! Usually, two strings are used for yard lines, so, as one line is being painted, the other is being set so there is no delay in setup. A 10-foot PVC pipe is used as a guide as to where to stop so there is no interference with the number position.
Giant Visqueen stencils are then laid out in between selected locations on the grid and dotted out with corresponding aerosol-can colors. Once dotted out, several paint machines with select colors are used to fill in the location and sponsors’ logos. Most of the colors are filled in by painters from Texas, Oregon, and Arizona. Kemp, the contractor, flies in three or four experienced field painters for the detail painting. Specialized tools and stencils are used to give better detail, accuracy, and sharp edges while painting.
Hits And Misses
For the past 5 years, the finals have been held at the WinStar Casino in Thackerville with qualifier venues in:
Mesquite, Nev.
Maricopa, Ariz.
Denver, Colo.
Atlantic City, N.J.
Rochester, N.Y.
Columbia, S.C.
Kingsport, Tenn.
In Denver, the grid was 500 yards, as a ball usually carries farther in high altitude. Some venues are narrower because of the course layout and goes even across sand traps to allow for the desired width. One grid had to be shorter due to a pond at the end. The tee box is usually elevated with portable, covered stands for fans and sponsors to watch the tremendous swings of these long-drive contestants. The tee box is a large piece of synthetic turf with three individual driving pads.
The rules have changed over the years, but most recently a golfer has eight balls to hit in 3 minutes. Two golfers are usually paired off in the later rounds, with the one hitting the farthest drive advancing to the next round. Drives that land outside the grid are disqualified.
Early on in the competitions, the logos were laid out in the direction of the grid, but after a few years the logos would face the camera angle shooting across the grid in order to follow the travel of the ball.
Over the past 5 years, the paint crew has endured extreme heat, torrential downpours, gnats, heavy dew, high winds, golfers playing amid the setup, travel adjustments, and cancellations, as well as the training of new crew members. Every once in a while, a logo is quickly added, which requires a new stencil that must be made quickly, or the logo needs to be freehanded. Mistakes require removing or altering logos. One time in Atlantic City, when inclement weather was predicted, the entire grid and logos had to be painted in one day with portable lights being brought in to finish at night.
Due to the recent pandemic, qualifying rounds for the contest were quickly cancelled, and the championship slated for mid-September soon followed. At this time, it is uncertain whether the World Long Drive Championship will ever resume.
Mike Hebrard is the owner of Athletic Field Design, a consulting firm that specializes in designing, building, and maintaining athletic fields. Reach him at hebrard@athleticfield.com.