10/1/2021 - By Mike Hess

Have you ever spent a lot of time on a gift/project for someone? You devote countless hours to planning, building and perfecting this one big thing, and then you have to wait for the big moment where you can finally present it and see their reaction. It's a great feeling that we all can relate to, seeing your hard work payoff as intended and benefit who it was for! This, ceremoniously, was the case for Director of Course Maintenance, Chris Flick, and his whole team at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club when they were finally able to hold the Ultimate Long Drive™ (ULD) world championship on their grid.

The championship was a huge success, with over 160 registrations in 25 divisions, coming from 8 different countries, the ULD™ draws together people from all walks of life giving everyone a chance to compete. After such a long wait, there was no one more excited to finally see the drivers tee off than Chris, who was excited by just how many groups of people there were. "It involved everyone. They had a military class, they had a senior class, they had youth classes, they had adaptive classes. It was really inclusive over a lot of different types of people." He continued, "10 people from different countries were there, groups for men, women, they really catered to a broad range of people."

The full competition grid was completed in 2020 when the event was originally supposed to be held, unfortunately it was postponed due to COVID-19 (read more about the grid's construction). "At the end of last year, it almost felt like a permanent sod farm, not being sure what or when we would get to do with it." As they had almost a full year before the competition was set to begin, the last year was all about maintenance. Low height of cut, an area longer and more open than most tees, maintaining water and spray consumption, etc. The big question was how the competition would end up going, and whether or not it would justify all of these precise inputs. The tournament went off without a hitch, bringing a strong comeback event and the recognition of hundreds of people from 8 countries to the beautiful grid.

At the end of the 3-day competition, there stood 6 professional winners:

Though there is no official winner over all of the divisions, Jim Waldron gave the longest drive of all, at an impressive 367 yards.

Now that Cog Hill has this anticipated, and proven successful event under their belts, will they be pushing for more events to utilize their massive driving grid? That's the hope! Longest dive competitions are a niche market and there aren't events for them all the time, however because of how unique they are, people love to attend. "When it comes to this market, people just love to come see competitors blast some golf balls." The core game of golf will go on as the day is long and people will always return to it. But, when they have the opportunity to see something as interesting as a single stroke competition of technique, accuracy and strength, such as the long drive, the overall interest is justifiably high. Which gives Cog Hill the perfect opportunity to continue using their long drive grid in the years to come. "Who knows what will happen for next year. I like to think either they'll be back or somebody else will want to come in and experience it, kind of get it on the map and let people know we have this thing. I think people are now a little bit more aware of what we are able to give them so, hopefully that's the case, we'll see."

So then, what's next for Cog Hill as a whole? Chris was excited to share, "We're going to have the girls and boys PGA junior championship on courses 2 and 4 next summer. So that's kind of our next big thing, which is cool because we haven't had a PGA event since 2011, we haven't had a significant event since then. We're looking forward to that, it's kind of a way for us to stay relevant with the PGA tour and kind of stay on their top of line." The PGA Junior Championship will be held in August of 2022 at Cog Hill.

As for the Ultimate Long Drive™ 2022 season/World Championship, the 2022 season begins in October of 2021 and will be extended (to compensate for those starting late due to COVID-19) through September 2022. The World Championship will be held in Bradenton, Florida, hosted by Premier Sports Complex near the end of October 2022.

We will keep our eyes open for more Ultimate Long Drive™ and PGA events coming to Cog Hill. To see more of their beautiful course and get in touch with them directly, head over to their website.