A while back, our normally perspicacious Ron Mon bestowed upon us his guide to greater distance. I was sad to see, though, that Ron’s sagacity failed him faster than John Daly’s self-control when he stumbled into his third point:

“3/ Get a big driver. I picked one up from a company whose name mimics that of a greek [sic] goddess. I purchased it after banging the same driver that belonged to a former player, and came to understand truly the changes that technology has wrought. There seem to be about four companies that make a life-altering driver, so limit your search to them. Sorry to be so frank, smaller companies.”

That’s a huge over-simplification. Did it hurt when you pulled it out of your butt?

It so happens that small companies make some of the best drivers on the market. As supporting evidence, consider SMT, a small company whose drivers recently fared quite well indeed at the 2007 Re/Max World Long Drive Championships, to wit:

–Longest drive of the championship: 408-yards with an SMT 455 Deep Bore
–Longest drive of the televised finals: 404-yards, 455 Deep Bore
–4th place, Open Division
–2nd & 4th place Women’s Division
–3rd place, Super Senior Division

And you know what, I’m not even going to prattle on about SMT’s top finishes in the 2007 South African Long Drive Championship or the Australian Championship. It’s just overkill.

Then there are component companies (gasp!), and their bargain-priced sticks that you get to put together yourself. One such big dog brought to my attention is the Golfsmith Snake Eyes Viper TI 464. This behemoth ($160 for the kit) was put in play by one Carrick Williams of Starkville, Miss., and the first words out of his mouth were: “Oh, my!”

Williams dropped his handicap 5 strokes in a couple of months after putting his self-made driver into his bag.

“I give full credit to that driver,” he says. “There are a lot of sub-400-yard par 4s on my home course, and I’m hitting wedge into all of them. That makes it a much easier game.”

So put that in your ball washer and pump it, all you small-company haters.

God bless the little guy (with the big drives)!

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