Funny Steve Rajeff Story.
Although he has won the annual American Casting Association (ACA) championship 34 consecutive times, and the bi-annual World Casting Championship 13 times, the largest crowd Steve Rajeff ever cast in front of was at a promotional stunt one hour before the start of a Professional Golf Association tournament. Rajeff was to compete against long-ball hitter Fred Couples to see who could send a golf ball farther.
At the time, Rajeff's employer made shafts for golf clubs and he was introduced as "a fisherman from G. Loomis." Lee Travino confided to the other PGA players that his money was on Couples. Couples went first, and drove the ball a measured 333 yards straight down the fairway.
Rajeff had rigged an 11-foot surf rod with 30-pound-test line knotted around the reel arbor. He twisted a ring-eye screw into a golf ball, and practiced snapping the line with the force of the cast, sending the ball off as if from a slingshot. He had made practice casts into a lake this way, and although he knew the ball was going at least 250 yards, he didn't know if he could beat Couples' drive of 333 yards.
On a cast with a surf rod, the lure travels in a 360-degree arc before being sent to its destination, and on his warm-up swing, Rajeff underestimated the closeness of the PGA players who were crowded around to watch. "I almost took out the whole PGA tour when I whistled the ball past their noses," Rajeff said later.
After asking the players to move back, Rajeff wound up and launched the ball 337 yards--which beat Couples' single attempt by 4 yards. When asked if this was an important victory, Rajeff just laughed and said, "I was just happy I didn't kill anybody. Not all my practice attempts went as straight as that one."
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Gramps
