Adam Long hits a tee shot on the 9th hole during the first round of the 2023 Butterfield Bermuda Championship. | Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Adam Long, a one-time winner on the PGA Tour, snapped a 31-year-old record at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
The record for most consecutive fairways hit on the PGA Tour stood for a long time.
Thirty-one years, to be exact.
But after hitting 56-of-56 fairways at last week’s Worldwide Technologies Championship, and since he found his last three fairways at the Shriners Children’s Open, Adam Long only needed to find his first two fairways on Thursday to break the record.
He did so with ease.
“Had everyone not come up and said something to me the last 24 hours, I probably wouldn’t think about it as much as I did,” Long admitted after opening with a 5-under 66 at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Adam Long at the 2023 Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
“But it was in my mind, for sure, to start. Hit a hybrid on the first, and then the second fairway’s really hard to hit. Luckily, it was kind of into the wind, so I hit a driver and hung in the fairway somehow and perfectly in the middle, so after that, I was just kind of coasting.”
When his ball landed on the short grass on the par-5 second, it marked Long’s 60th consecutive fairway hit.
That snapped the record of 59 straight fairways, set by Brian Claar in 1992. Claar never won on the PGA Tour, but he finished solo fifth at the 1989 U.S. Open at Oak Hill and tied for ninth at the 1992 PGA Championship at Bellerive.
Nevertheless, Long, who won the 2019 Desert Classic on the PGA Tour, continued to stripe it on Thursday in Bermuda.
After finding the fairway on the first two holes, he found the short grass on the next eight holes—not counting the par-3s, of course.
But his streak came to an end at the difficult par-4 15th, which measures 412 yards.
“I felt bad for the media guys following me,” Long joked about the streak ending.
“I told them a couple of holes earlier, I’m like, one of these times you’re going to be able to get out of here, sorry about this. There were a few lucky ones like on 11 and 12 that somehow found the fairway. The one that missed, yeah, it was a 3-wood that I kind of hit up in the air a little too spinny and the wind caught it. Didn’t quite go far enough so it stayed in the rough. Yeah, it was a little bit of relief that that part was over.”
That missed fairway at 15 did not do too much damage, however, as Long found the green and two-putted for par. He then made a three at the difficult par-3 16th and then finished par-par for his 66. He is five shots back of leader Alex Noren, who went wild with a 61 Thursday.
But Long’s miss at 15 ended the streak at 69 consecutive fairways hit, which is pretty remarkable.
Will it take another 31 years for someone to break Long’s record? Who knows! But whoever breaks it will have to hit 70 straight, which obviously spans more than one tournament.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko for more golf coverage. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough too.
