Hit the ball hard but work harder — that is Brad Habenicht’s winning approach.

Habenicht may be able to hit a golf ball a long way, but he is more proud of his work ethic because that’s a big part of what got him to the World Long Drive Championships for the fifth time. The competition is set for later this month in Mesquite, Nevada.

“I outwork everybody,” Habenicht said. “They call me the hardest working long driver, the guys that I practice with.”

He will be competing in the Super Senior Division for competitors 50 to 55 years old at the competition which starts Wednesday, Oct. 27 and runs through Nov. 6. It will be shown on ESPN on Christmas morning.

“I look forward to the finals,” he said. “It’s fun. All the players get together and you get to see everyone’s new equipment and techniques. The camaraderie is wonderful.”

Habenicht grew up in Maple Valley, graduated from Tahoma High in 1974, then went to Green River Community and the University of Washington where he earned a business degree with an emphasis in marketing.

At age 6 he started playing baseball and he played in high school, community college and for the Huskies.

When he was 8 years old he began playing golf. His father, Fred, played golf, his uncle played golf, his mother played golf and so, “I learned golf etiquette at a really early age.”

In high school he played football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring, so “I played golf in my off time.”

It was in 1995 someone suggested he check out a long drive competition in Olympia.

“It took me about four tries to get it in the grid, I was so nervous because there were all these people standing around watching,” Habenicht said. “It took me a couple of years to figure it out, the equipment and the technique, then I started winning.”

First at the local level, then the district level, and then he qualified for the World Finals “which is a really big deal.”

The idea behind long drive competitions is to hit the golf ball into a grid that’s about 50 yards wide. Each competitor gets six attempts.

When he first began competing, Habenicht decided to try and make up for a size disadvantage by using drivers with longer shafts, in addition to epic workouts at the gym and at the driving range.

Habenicht stands 5-foot-9, but, many of the competitors in his division stand well over 6 feet tall.

So, since there was no length limit on the clubs, at one point he started tinkering.

“Because I had a fundamentally solid golf swing, I started experimenting,” he said. “I went to a 55 inch driver and just killed it. I had a 64 inch driver that I was hitting 400 yard drives consistently.”

But, the governing body decided to go back to 48 inch shaft drivers approved by the United States Golf Association.

As a result of everyone swinging the same club length, Habenicht said, the distances have gotten smaller and the difference between the top driver and the bottom may be five to seven yards.

Habenicht has bags and bags filled with drivers. He has all kinds of funky training tools to help work on the mechanics of his swing and stretch out the most used muscles in a long drive swing.

The equipment long drivers use are not designed for a regular round of 18 holes of golf, Habenicht explained, and they use drivers that have very low loft.

“The reason we use them is because we swing so fast, with a regular driver we would hit it too high, or we would hook it or slice it,” he said. “To most people they would be too stiff. Golf clubs, if it’s the right fit and the right combination, it’s like the right bat. When you get a great set up like that, you just stick with it.”

This year, rather than needing to win a competition to qualify, Habenicht was invited based on the body of his work in the sport. He has qualified four times before as well as served as the first alternate five times.

“Last year when I qualified I won the regional finals down in Dallas, Texas, which is a really competitive district, so, that was a good victory,” he said. “I qualified the last day. I won it in the last round. In my division there are 50 players. The cool thing about it is there are seven world champions in my division.”

He trains and competes in between working a full time day job, teaching long drive lessons and spending time with his family. He’s been married to his wife, Marla, for 30 years, who he said is “the glue that holds everything together.” They have two daughters, Lauren, 26, and Kristie, 22.

Habenicht trains late at night or early in the morning.

“I just find those windows,” he said. “It’s hard. It’s definitely a challenge. What usually gets me going if I sit down to watch TV, I say, ‘What’s the world champion doing right now?’ And that gets me off my chair.”

He also attributes his success to the support of his family, his mom Dorothy, his sponsors which includes Tahoma Athletic Club, Maple Valley Physical Therapy, Wilderness Chevron, DCS and Golf Happens.

He also works with a group of long drive competitors who help keep him focused — Kevin Osborn, who has been to the world finals seven times, Bruce Evans, Robert Kaindl, and Leann Hine, whom he described as “the best one of the bunch of us.”

That’s his support team, he said, the people he practices with and talks to about equipment among other things.

When he arrives in Mesquite Habenicht has a pretty good idea what he needs to do.

“What it’s going to take to win in my division is 370 to 380 (yards) if the conditions are fair,” he said. “And that’s where I am hitting it when I’m hitting it well.”

But, there’s plenty of time between now and then to train, because it’s all about the preparation.

Habenicht may be able to hit the ball hard but he’ll rely on his hard work to put him over the top.10_