Adam Long put together one of his best starts in months at the World Wide Technology Championship at El Cardonal at Diamante last week, and one key reason was because he played every second shot from the short stuff. Yes, every one. Long didn’t miss a fairway all week.
If that sounds preposterous, that’s probably because it is. Long’s 56-for-56 fairway week made him the first player to finish a four-round PGA Tour event with 100 percent driving accuracy since Brian Claar, who accomplished the feat at the 1992 Memorial Tournament. That’s right, 31 years ago!
“If you’re going to be short-to-average length, you need to be pretty accurate to survive out here on Tour,” Long told PGATour.com. “… It is something that I pay attention to and work hard on.”
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Granted, the Tiger Woods-designed El Cardonal course has sprawling, forgiving fairways, with an average landing-area width of 60 yards. Some players were perfect hitting every fairway in certain rounds, and Paul Haley and Troy Merritt missed just one fairway each all week. Nearly a dozen more were 54 of 56. But only Long was able to pull off the perfecto.
Long shot 69 on Sunday, good enough for a T23 finish on the week, his best since a T16 at the Barbasol Championship back in July.
His superb week of driving accuracy shouldn’t be a total surprise, though. Long ranked 33rd and 24th, respectively, in driving accuracy the previous two seasons on Tour. He’s 13th in driving accuracy this season — hitting 66.78 percent of his fairways — although one epic 56-for-56 performance certainly boosted that number.
“It’s something I’ll be able to say forever,” Long told PGATour.com. “Some sort of bragging rights or an interesting stat at trivia nights.”
You can check out the 9-degree TaylorMade Stealth 2 driver Long used below.
