A couple months ago, Matt Leslie crushed a golf ball 435 yards.
Admittedly, he was hitting with the wind at his back and was at altitude in Whistler.
But, he still put a serious smack on that ball. And, he routinely lands shots 390 yards away from the tee.
With distance like that, Leslie is fun to watch when he's at the driving range. In a few weeks, fans at the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship will get to see him in action.
Leslie, a former Prince George resident who now lives in Victoria, has qualified for the golfing glamour event, which will bring the biggest bashers on the planet to Mesquite, Nev.
After some last-chance qualifying sessions, the real competition will get going on Oct. 22. Leslie, 24, will be in the open division, which features first-place prize money of $150,000.
"I'm beyond excited," said Leslie, a graduate of Prince George secondary school and UNBC. "I've been busting my butt all year. I went to a couple [Long Drivers of America] tour events this year and I had a pretty poor showing at both events and I was pretty frustrated. On a whim, I decided I was going to go to Oklahoma [for a world qualifier]. I'd worked too hard to quit so I went down there and qualified. It felt fantastic."
In the Oklahoma event -- held on a cool Sunday with players hitting into the wind -- Leslie won with a blast of 376 yards.
In Mesquite, he'll be one of 128 men in the open division.
"The first two days, Monday and Tuesday, they divide you into groups of 64," he said. "After those two days, the field is cut down to about a quarter of what it was. If I can make it through to there -- that's my goal for sure and anything else will be a definite bonus. I know I have what it takes to win but there's a lot that has to happen for that to transpire."
Balls must land in bounds, and stay in bounds, to be counted.
In long driving, success starts with generating clubhead speed. This season, Leslie has been working with swing coach Jeff Palmer, a guy he describes as the "golf guru" of Victoria's Olympic View Golf Club. Leslie has been granted free practice sessions at Olympic View, which happens to be managed by Randy Frank, the former director of golf at Prince George's Aberdeen Glen.
Leslie has partial sponsorship from Adams Golf. In competitions, he wields one of their clubs -- standard head, 50-inch shaft, triple stiff.
When it comes time to swing, Leslie is helped by the fact he stands six-foot-seven and weighs 240 pounds. But, at the LDA Tour events he attended this summer, he was one of the smaller competitors.
"There were a lot of guys there that dwarfed me," he said with a chuckle. "They might not be as tall as me, but they're ripped."
Leslie has experienced a RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship once before. When he was 18 and still living in Prince George, he qualified for the junior version in Fort Worth, Tex. He was a finalist there, with a drive of 409 yards.
Leslie later walked away from long driving, mostly because of the cost associated with competing. But, after his relocation to Victoria last year, he got the bug again and started swinging seriously about five months ago.
"Moving to Victoria and being able to play golf all year, it was always in my mind," he said. "People would always say I hit the ball far, and I knew that I hit the ball far. I was just like, 'You know what? I've got to give this a shot.' It just started eating away at me.
"It's fun," he added. "All you're doing is whacking it as far as you can."
