Layton’s Ryan Reisbeck has a new belt to bring home and this one means more to him than all the rest. The 45-year-old father of five won the World Long Drive Championship in the Senior Division at Bobby Jones Golf Course in Atlanta, Georgia Oct. 18.

“Long Drive World Champion sounds nice,” he said. “I’ve been chasing it for a while. In some senses, nothing has changed, and it another sense, everything has. Every year since 2010, I have gone home a loser in essence. Now I feel like, ‘Wow, this is crazy!’”

In the final round against Robert Oristaglio, Reisbeck put up a 372-yarder with one of his nine drives which ended up being four yards further than his opponent to take home a $15,000 check along with additional world ranking points. “Robert hit his ball and it looked like it might roll past my ball, but then it just sort of died just short of mine,” said Reisbeck, who averaged nearly 370 yards per drive through his five rounds of the day, with his longest being 390 yards.

After Reisbeck secured the win, he called his wife, Sarah, who was with his children in California for Fall Break. “She didn’t answer her phone, but they were watching on TV and they were confused on what round of the play the event was on,” he said. “Towards the end, they heard the announcer say, ‘Ryan Reisbeck is two balls away from a world championship,’ and then they saw me with the belt and went crazy.”

The 6’4” former collegiate pitcher at the University of Utah, was in his third tournament in the Senior Division, after playing Long Drive events in the Open division the past 13 years. This summer, he was runner-up to World No. 1 Eddie Fernandes at Lakeside Golf Course in West Bountiful Aug. 12 and at a second event in Kingsport, Tennessee Aug. 28. 

“Between those events and Worlds, I made a real push physically to get in better shape and train harder,” Reisbeck, a member of the Callaway Golf Long Drive team, said. “It’s a long event with a lot of hitting, and that preparation really ended up paying off for me.”

Reisbeck noted that Fernandes had been hurt in a practice round during the Tennessee event and was not in top-top form at the world championships. “There’s still meat there because I wasn’t able to compete against Eddie. If you want to be the best, you need to beat the best,” Reisbeck said. “I want him to come back healthy and then I want to go against him and win that matchup outright.”

At the WLD championships, Reisbeck, who uses specialized drivers by his sponsor Kineitix, also competed in the Open Division which featured the top 128 players in the world, and reached the third round – placing in the top 25.

After helping to tear down the event after the weekend’s festivities, Reisbeck said he would move forward embracing the responsibility he is now feeling as a world champion. “I feel like you need to be a good ambassador and representative of the sport and be willing to give back,” he said. “I want to be worthy of that and help others find ways to improve their own skills and with exposure for Long Drive.”

Reisbeck also takes every chance he can to recruit others to the game. “People don’t know if they’ll like it until they try it and they don’t know how far they can drive the ball until they try it,” he said. For more information on Long Drive, visit www.worldlongdrive.com.