Facing a 40-mph headwind, Sacramento’s Ryan Winther smoked a drive 343 yards to win the Re/Max World Long Drive Championship in Mesquite, Nev., last October. Winther used a Krank driver head with 4.5 degrees of loft, and a House of Forged XXXX Ryan Winther signature model shaft. The former Tampa Bay
Rays prospect, who can throw a baseball 100 mph, owns the Guinness record by carrying a drive 430 yards. The 6-foot-4, 252-pound Winther has been measured with a ball speed of 226.7 mph. Bubba Watson led the PGA Tour in 2012 at just under 185 mph. Winther also cranked a drive 469 yards dur- ing the 2012 World Long Drive Championships. How can Winther possibly hit the ball that far?
“Swing fast is my No. 1 tip,”
Winther told Golfweek after winning. “You have to swing fast. You can’t teach speed, but you can work on it. So forget about swing- ing slow. Just swing fast.”
NCGA Player of the Year Ben Geyer
Ben Geyer gave
everyone a six-month head start, and then with one sizzling summer, he chased them all down like the Road Runner. Geyer was nowhere to be seen halfway through the points season, but the 20-year-old senior at St. Mary’s College needed just 10 NCGA-sanctioned points events to shoot to the top of the standings, unseat- ing six-time Player of the Year Randy Haag (fourth), and holding off a hard-charging Danny Paniccia (second) and Michael Weaver (third). “With the small number
title. His big- gest jolt came
from winning the NCGA Stroke
Amateur Champion- ship by four shots in July, where he also had the plea-
sure of knocking off Hardy, the defending champ. “I was playing a lot of
Ben Geyer
of events he played, and the amount of points he racked up, it’s quite the accomplishment,” said Scott Hardy, a multiple NCGA major winner and Geyer’s head coach at St. Mary’s. Geyer piled up all of his 1,631
points during a four-month period, including 1,155 points during a 25-day span in late June and early July to clinch the Player of the Year
Ben Geyer
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Hometown: Arbuckle Home club: Arbuckle GC Points total: 1,631 Margin of victory: 27 over Danny Paniccia Biggest win: NCGA Amateur Stroke Play Stroke Play Championship 2012 wins (3): NCGA Amateur Stroke Play Championship; Contra Costa County Amateur; Antioch City Amateur
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2012 notable finishes: 2nd at California State Amateur
For the latest golf news visit NCGA.org Ryan Winther
good golf during that stretch,” Geyer said. Geyer finished runner- up at the California State Amateur, and made match play at the U.S. Public Links. He added two more wins at the Contra Costa County and Antioch City Amateurs to seal
the points title, which had become a tight race with Weaver reach- ing the finals of the U.S. Amateur, and Paniccia claiming the NCGA Valley Amateur. The three were separated by just 46 points. “I didn’t play in every single
[NCGA point] tournament, so I had to play better than decent to win [Player of the Year], and I felt like I did that,” said Geyer.