2 Coloradans earn Player of the Year awards from World Long Drive — Monica Lieving (Women’s Division) and Chase Noell (Amateur)
By Gary Baines – 12/11/2025
It seems only appropriate that in a year when Colorado hosted a state-record three World Long Drive events — including the World Championships — that competitors from the Centennial State figure so prominently in the WLD Player of the Year awards.
Specifically, two Coloradans were recently named WLD players of the year based on their season-long performance in 2025. As World Long Drive announced, Monica Lieving of Lakewood was the Women’s Player of the Year, while Chase Noell of Wellington was the co-Player of the Year in the Amateur Division.
Lieving, currently the No. 1-ranked competitor in women’s World Long Drive and the 2023 World Champion, won twice in four women’s WLD events in 2025, bringing her career victory total to seven. The real estate agent prevailed at the Rocky Mountain Rumble in August at Bigfoot Turf Farm in LaSalle, southeast of Greeley, with a career-best drive of 385 yards, and also prevailed at the Duel in the Desert in Mesquite, Nev., in April, when her long was 353.
In late September at the World Championships — also in LaSalle — Lieving advanced to the two-competitor women’s final for the second time in three years, but finished runner-up to 50-year-old Canadian Kelly Rudney, who hit three drives over 400 yards that day. Lieving’s best at the World Championships was 380 yards.
All told, Lieving recorded two wins, a second place and a third in her four WLD events in 2025.
Chase Noell of Wellington (shown at Bigfoot Turf Farm in September) won an Amateur Division event at that site in August.
As for Noell, he shared the Amateur Division Player of the Year honors with Kauner Kay as each accumulated 300 points for the season. Noell won the Rocky Mountain Rumble in LaSalle in August — when his long was 385 yards — and also recorded second-, third- and seventh-place showings in 2025.
Earning the Open Division Player of the Year honors was Zack Holton of Birmingham, Ala., who won the World Championship in LaSalle, where his long drive was 471 yards. In all, Holton captured three WLD titles this year, including two at Bigfoot Turf Farm as he also prevailed in the Rocky Mountain Rumble.
The men’s and women’s longest drives of the year both came at the World Championships in LaSalle as Scottie Pearman hit one 486 yards and Rudney 413.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com