{"id":698817,"date":"2026-05-28T06:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T06:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698817\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T06:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T06:54:11","slug":"kelly-rudney-is-getting-better-and-longer-with-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698817\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelly Rudney is getting better \u2014\u00a0and longer \u2014\u00a0with age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kelly Rudney never imagined an afternoon at the 2019 Toronto Golf &amp; Travel Show would turn into a life changing experience, but for the reigning World Long Drive (WLD) Women\u2019s champion, Canada\u2019s largest consumer golf showcase is where she got her first taste of a sport that has come to define her.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All it cost was $5. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChris McLean and Ken Long, two long drive guys, were there running a Canada Long Drive booth,\u201d smiled Rudney, thinking back to meeting the two long drive veterans at Mississauga\u2019s International Centre. \u201cI thought, well, this looks kind of cool. I hand over my five bucks, got three balls and one registered 275 yards on the (launch) monitor. They were like, \u2018Whoa.\u2019 Chris handed me a pamphlet on amateur long drive and said, \u2018You really should check this out.\u2019 Been quite a journey since then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rudney, 50, brought six years of long drive to a crescendo last fall.<\/p>\n<p>Turning back the clock, the Canadian \u201a nicknamed \u2018Mom\u2019 by her fellow competitors \u2014 smashed a 413-yard blast in the preliminary round at Bigfoot Turf Farm in LaSalle, Colo., to tie New Zealander Phillis Meti for the world record. In the finals, a 409-yard drive helped her defeat World No. 1 Monica Lieving and become the oldest woman to claim the crown. In doing so, she joined Jason Zuback (six times) and Jamie Sadlowski (twice) as Canadian WLD champions. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Log in to continue reading &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>        \u00d7<br \/>\n        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelly Rudney never imagined an afternoon at the 2019 Toronto Golf &amp; Travel Show would turn into a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,65615,82],"class_list":["post-698817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-magazine-feature","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}