Long drive champion clears Niagara Falls with golf shot
Published 12:15 am Friday, August 2, 2019
A World Long Drive champion has conquered Niagara Falls.
Maurice Allen, the 2018 World Long Drive champion off a 393-yard blast, became the first person to clear the famous cataracts with a golf ball, entering the Guinness Book of World Records with a 426-yard drive.
Allen, 37, attempted the feat in conjunction with Niagara (Ontario) Parks and Skratch, a digital media company working in golf. He was featured on Skratch’s web series, “Is it Driveable?”
In the third episode of the three-part series, which aired Thursday on YouTube, Allen scouts the location and chooses how to hit his shot.
He attempts the drive from the same location as PGA Tour professional John Daly back in 2005 — a platform just north of Niagara Parks’ Table Rock Centre on the Canadian side.
Daly’s attempts fell short. Allen’s ball carried 393 yards through the mist and fog.
“The hardest thing is there’s so much pressure on this,” he’d said in an interview on the YouTube series. “You know, when you go out and try to do something like this, you’re putting your name on the line. You’re putting your reputation on the line.
“And you’re trying to see, you know, if as a World Long Drive champion, just try and see if I can deliver.
Deliver he did. Allen, a native of the Orlando, Florida area now living in Atlanta, crushed three other drives off the platform before clearing the falls with his fourth — a shot he at first believed had fallen short, sunk down by the rain.
The distance from the Canadian overlook to the U.S. side of the falls is 342 yards.
For context, the longest in-air flight during the 2018 PGA Tour season was a 342.3-yard drive from Rory McIlroy.