Jason The Golf Ball Killer

Jason Zuback can hit a drive 280 yards--while sitting in a
folding chair. The 5'10", 215-pounder bopped a 412-yarder to win
the 1997 World Long Drive Championship and has a personal best
of 511. Zuback, who'll try for his fourth straight long-ball
world title on Saturday at Palms Golf Club in Mesquite, Nev., is
huge at parties too. Last year on The Late Late Show he drove
tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and brussels sprouts at a wall to
make dip for the audience.

This pharmacist from Calgary knows how to make the most of
liquefied foods. He consumes countless supplements in his
mealtime shakes--pass the creatine but hold the andro--and
recently found a new ambrosia. "It's a neurotransmitter
formula," he says. "Amino acids in a special profile." No wonder
two-time long-drive champ Art Sellinger calls Zuback a mad
scientist. "Jason combines science and violence," says
Sellinger. "He has unbelievable leverage, flexibility and
strength, and he tries to break the ball."

"Sometimes my fingers split open," Zuback says. "They can't take
all the momentum and the force on the club. I stick them back
together with Blue Glue, a surgical adhesive."

Whether he four-peats this week or not, he'll keep smashing
balls through telephone books, planks of particle board (above),
department-store mannequins and watermelons in $7,500-a-day
exhibitions. The sultan of swing can also count on plenty of
endorsement income. "I've got all my clothes laid out," Zuback
said before leaving for Mesquite. "With the caps, shirts and
everything else, getting the right logos on is half the battle."

--Cameron Morfit

COLOR PHOTO: TODD KOROL