Zack Holton, 50-year-old Kelly Rudney claim long drive World Championship titles in Colorado, with Holton winning for third time in LaSalle; overall, longest drives travel 486 yards (men) and 413 (women); Coloradan Monica Lieving runner-up in Women’s Division
By Gary Baines – 9/27/2025
LASALLE — All and all, the first long drive World Championships ever held in the mile-high air of Colorado turned out to be a heady experience.
The three-day event, which concluded on Saturday at Bigfoot Turf Farm southeast of Greeley, produced some remarkable results, even by World Long Drive standards.
Let’s count the ways:
— Given that the Turf Farm is at about 4,800-foot elevation and that a pretty stiff wind was helping the competitors by blowing west, Saturday yielded the longest drive of the eight-event WLD season in 2025, with Scottie Pearman launching one 486 yards, enticingly close to the elusive 500-yard milestone.
— Along the same lines, Zack Holton of Birmingham, Ala., hit the longest drive ever in the finals of the World Championships, a 471-yarder that gave him the Open Division title. That came in a matchup with Pearman that until that moment had defied the odds by being tied at 459 yards apiece after each player had hit four of their six balls in the final. With Saturday’s win — worth $40,000 in prize money — Holton moved to No. 1 in the WLD rankings.
— Holton has won Open Division titles four times on the World Long Drive circuit — three regular tour victories plus this World Championship. But to say he’s especially excelled at Bigfoot Turf Farm would be like noting these guys hit a golf ball pretty hard. Three of Holton’s four Open titles have come in LaSalle as he previously won tour events in 2023 and last month.
“It’s been a good spot for me,” he told Colorado Golf Journal on Saturday evening. “I might need to buy a little plot of land in LaSalle. It’s been really good to me.”
And now Holton’s resumé includes winning the grandaddy of all long-drive titles, the World Championships.
Holton with his World Championship belt.
“This is everything that we work for,” the 28-year-old said. “I’ve been in the sport for five years. I started as an amateur, just like so many of the guys. I started watching these guys — Justin James, who I faced in the semifinals today, I’ve been watching him on TV and YouTube since 2017. It’s everything you work for. It seems like the measurement of success in long drive is ‘how many World Championships have you won?’ The tour wins are definitely a bonus — confidence builders and they show that your work is paying off. But it’s, ‘Can you, in the heat of the moment, put it together and get the win for the World Championship?’”
The answer for Holton now is an emphatic yes.
— Meanwhile, a 50-year-old similarly beat the odds to win the Women’s Division championship on Saturday, defeating a competitor roughly half her age — 2023 World Champion Monica Lieving of Lakewood, 27 — in the finals. Not only that, but that 50-year-old, Canadian Kelly Rudney, further seemed ageless in hitting three drives that traveled more than 400 yards on Saturday. One during an earlier round went 413 yards, which fell just one yard shy of the all-time women’s WLD record, set by Phillis Meti, who captured last year’s title. In the finals against Lieving, Rudney launched one 406 yards, which earned her the victory.
“I could cry — and I probably will shortly,” said Rudney, who resides in Kitchener, Ontario, and works behind the scenes in the TV industry. She earned $8,000 for Saturday’s victory.
Canadian Kelly Rudney hit three drives over 400 yards on Saturday.
Asked if she surprised herself by beating a competitor 23 years younger than herself, Rudney said, “I don’t think so. I’ve always been athletic and I’ve always played competitive sports (including semi-pro soccer and being ranked in tennis) and I’ve always kept myself mostly in shape. I think I’m pretty strong. I lift some weights and I try to eat the right foods. So the sky’s the limit.”
Rudney becomes the oldest women’s winner in World Championships history.
The aforementioned were just some of the highlights of a long-drive event that included a lot of loud music, quite a few celebratory yells from the competitors, and a lot of very large, athletic golfers on the men’s side of things.
Coloradan Monica Lieving made it to the finals on Saturday after winning the women’s World title two years ago.
Saturday’s competition very nearly produced a Colorado champion as Lieving is a real estate agent from Lakewood who made it to the World Championship women’s final for the second time in three years. But Rudney’s 406-yard shot on the second of her six balls in the final round proved too much for Lieving, the top-ranked women’s long-driver in the world, who had to settle for second place after countering with a 380-yard drive. She won a WLD event at Bigfoot Turf Farm just last month.
“I want to win everything, so not winning obviously sucks,” said Leaving, who was asked if finishing second in her home state was any harder to take. “I’m an athlete. I always want to win. I always hate losing. I definitely wanted to win being here locally in Colorado. That would have been extra special. But it is what it is. It’s still really cool to be competing here in my home state regardless of the outcome.
“Kelly was hitting it well all day today. She went over 400 three times. It’s hard to beat that. I wish it was me (as champion), but I’m happy for her. She’s a great person and works really hard. Ultimately, I’m happy she got her first World Championship win.”
And it’s not like Lieving was struggling on Saturday. Her best drive of the day was 380 yards, just five short of her personal best. In the last three women’s World Championships, she’s gone victory, round of 4 and finals. (She’s won seven times overall in World Long Drive competitions, including her World Championship.) Not too shabby.
“I think it’s positive in the sense that I’m one of the most consistent players that makes the top four or top eight,” said the former Arkansas State player. “That’s how I’ve gotten to be No. 1 in the world — my consistency and how I perform. I definitely look to that as a positive.”
The only problem for Lieving on Saturday was she couldn’t take advantage of the more firm conditions on the right side of the grid by hitting her drives there. She was trying to hit a bit of a cut to land her ball there, but was tending toward a draw instead, with her shots hitting in the middle of the grid much of the time.
“I should have hit more fades. I was trying to, but ultimately it just didn’t connect,” she said. “That’s the difference between winning and losing. I definitely felt like I had (400-yards-plus) in me. I just didn’t hit the shot shape I was trying to. … I was hitting some great shots down the middle, but there was no roll in the middle. I think if I was hitting the spot I was trying to hit, I would have gotten to 400, but I didn’t execute it.”
Rudney relished the moment after her victory.
Meanwhile, Rudney was at the top of her game, with drives of 413, 409 and 406 yards. No other women’s competitor went further than 395. And, as noted, the 413 was one yard short of Meti’s all-time WLD record for a female golfer.
“I’ve always looked up to Phillis Meti and she holds the record,” Rudney said. “I feel very good to be right there with her. Everybody’s hope is to go over 400, so I hoped I could. Then (I did it) three times. I shocked myself — yes I did.”
Rudney’s father was a golf pro, but she played only off and on over the years until getting the inkling in 2019 to compete in long drive.
“I have not had a long career in golf,” she said. “I used to play around — just with friends — and they said I hit the ball far. 2019 I went to a long drive event — an indoor one — and tried it. I lost in the finals of the (women’s) Amateur World Championships that year. In 2020 I won Amateurs and turned pro right away. So it’s been a really short career, but apparently I can do it.”
Three women’s Open Division long-drive titles — two in regular tour events and this World Championship — prove that point, to say the least.
Holton was holding nothing back on Saturday.
While 400 yards was surpassed by the women on Saturday, the men’s Open Division competitors couldn’t quite make it to 500, though helped by the altitude and the wind.
Pearman certainly gave it a go, recording drives of 478 and 486 yards, respectively, in the round of 8 and the round of 4. But while either of those would have put him over the top in the finals, his best against Holton was 459, while the champ posted a 471 for the victory — two shy of his personal best in competition, which also came at Bigfoot Turf Farm.
“(500 yards) is definitely something you’d really want to get to, but as long as I’m hitting it further than the guy next to me (in a two-man match-play format), it doesn’t really matter,” Holton said.
Runner-up Scottie Pearman hit the longest drive of the World Championships, a 486-yarder.
Notably, in that regard, Holton barely even made the finals as he edged James by a single yard (440-439) in the semis.
Also in the Open Division, the defending World Champion was Sean Johnson, a Durango native who went to high school in Colorado Springs. Johnson made it to the round of 8, but he didn’t get any of his six balls in the 80-yard-wide grid in the quarterfinals and bowed out there.
Colorado native and defending champion Sean Johnson unleashing one on Saturday.
Another prominent player who exited well before the finals was Colton Casto, who came into the week ranked No. 1 in the world. He lost in the round of 16, though he was in a three-way playoff for the final spot into the round of 8. He didn’t find the grid with any of his drives in the playoff.
Meanwhile, at least a couple of other players with significant Colorado ties competed this week at Bigfoot Turf Farm.
Sydney Merchant, who grew up in Morrison.
Sydney Merchant, who grew up in Morrison, finished seventh in her nine-competitor group in round 1 of the Women’s Division and failed to advance. Her longest drive was 319 yards.
Chase Noell of Wellington, who won the Amateur competition of a World Long Drive event at Bigfoot Turf Farm last month, made it to the final four of the Amateurs, with an personal event-best of 406 yards, before exiting. Tanner Pipes of Kirksville, Mo., claimed the Amateur Division title on Saturday, with a 396-yard poke in the finals and an personal event-best 415 in the Open Division and 409 in an earlier round of the Amateur Division.
Coloradan Chase Noell made it to the final four of the Amateur Division.
Meanwhile, Hunter Noell made it to round 2 in the Open Division, but no further. His long drive was 392 yards.
On Thursday night, Mike Dobbyn of Fort Worth, Texas, winner of the 2007 Open Division World Championship, claimed the Senior Division title. He thus became just the third long driver to win World Championship titles in both the Open and Senior Division, joining Jason Zuback and David Mobley. Dobbyn’s longest drive of the event overall was 405 yards, in the round of 16. Ryan Reisbeck managed a 412-yarder in the first round of the Seniors.
This week’s World Championships will be televised by the Golf Channel, but not until mid-December.
For all the results from the 2025 World Championships, CLICK HERE.
Some of the fans who attended Saturday’s competitions.
A look down the right side of the grid at Bigfoot Turf Farm.
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