In early June 2023, we announced another new exciting partnership to our belt – 21-year-old rising talent in the European Long Drive Games, Owen Meeds! Owen has spent the last year working on his swing and has only recently begun competing in the big leagues. However, his talent hasn’t gone unrecognised as he’s been ranking impressively – as of the end of July, Owen was still leading the table by MILES with a point difference of 1050 points from first to second.
As well as having a close personal relationship with Owen, one of the many reasons we chose to sponsor Owen was because we believe Long Drive is a competitive sport completely different to golf, and we love it. For one thing, scores don’t matter – it’s about distance, and hitting it as far as possible. Whilst golf has been around for centuries, Long Drive is far more recent and is becoming increasingly popular due to its less formal and fun features. As more and more people look to join and support the game, this spin-off sport is something that even non-golfers can enjoy.
The rules are simple – hit it as far as possible and keep it in the grid. Accuracy is important but distance is the point-scorer. At present, Meeds’ best shot is at 420 yards – that is the length of just over three and a half Premier League football pitches!
At the beginning of July, Owen travelled just under 4,000 miles to Canada for the World Long Drive Tour event in Port Rowan. All of the top long drivers from around the world competed, names such as; Martin Borgmeier and Kyle Berkshire. Owen has shared an overview of his journey below…
“Day 1 of the event was groups of 16 and top 8 from each group got through to Day 2, in my group I had 6 out of the top 20 ranked in the world. I managed to finish top of the group and easily qualify for day 2 with 800 points from a max of 1000.
Also on the first day I played in a qualifying event for the world championships as my ranking is not currently high enough to automatically qualify. I managed to qualify and hit a new longest ball in competition of 420 yards. This means I’ll be making the trip over to Atlanta in October to fight for a part of the $400,000 purse.
Day 2 consisted of 24 players in two groups of 12, with top 8 from each group going to the round of 16 which is straight head to head. I came 4th in my group qualifying for the round of 16. I faced up against Seb Twaddell in my head to head , who holds the double world record for fastest ball speed and fastest club head speed ever. After hitting a drive 413 yards on my third ball I thought I might have beaten him but unfortunately he hit his fourth ball 419 yards and I wasn’t able to better him, meaning I finished in T9.
I want to give a big thank you to HBC Logistics for helping me out and giving me the opportunity to compete against the best athletes in the world. I’m happy to say they will have been a part of my journey from the very start.”
