In Totally Driven’s never ending search for learning about creating more distance/power for our players we recently had the opportunity to see Long Drive Champion Jamie Sadlowski and former champ Art Sellinger perform an exhibition in Orlando.
We were able to pick Jamie’s brain a bit and found some very interesting information. First of all for those who don’t know, Jamie is only about 6′ tall and 170 pounds wringing wet. No one would think he is the longest driver on the face of the earth by looking at him. Also, Jamie is about as non-technical as you can get. He doesn’t like to see his swing on video and doesn’t want to talk about positions of the golf swing.
Jamie Sadlowski, not big but powerful
Being from Canada, Sadlowski was a hockey player before he was a golfer. Interestingly he played hockey left handed and swings a golf club right handed. It’s been my experience that generally the longest drivers of the golf ball who played hockey played both sports from the same side. Jamie actually started playing golf cross-handed with his left hand low on the golf club. He said he could hit it well over 300 yards this way. Art Sellinger explained that Jamie has very flexible wrists that would allow him to be able to not only play cross-handed, but get to a John Daly like backswing position with his club well past parallel at the top of his swing now. His workouts are focused on flexibility and developing speed more than strength.
We saw Jamie hitting a 30″ long driver 320 yards. This is 4-5 inches shorter than the average putter. His club-head speed with the driver is 150 mph and ball speed is 215 mph. Art said Jamie has been hitting the ball 400 yards since he was 16 years old. He also hits the ball pretty darn straight. We never saw a huge slice or hook.
What did we learn about how to increase distance in the golf swing? First of all, raw strength or size is not a prerequisite for hitting the golf ball far but focus on developing speed is important. Secondly, a natural swing may create more power than a pleasing on plane, positionally taught golf swing. Also, cross-training may be beneficial.
We’re striving to learn as much as possible so that we can help everyone we work with to hit it long and straight!
Andy Thompson, Totally Driven
Tags: Totally Driven, Jamie Sadlowski, Art Sellinger, long driver, longest drivers, more distance, more power golf
