His Drives Keep Going and Going . . .

Sean Fister’s job is smashing golf balls out of sight.

He goes through half a dozen drivers a week. In his basement, one drawer of an old chest is crammed with broken heads of drivers that couldn’t stand up to the terrific club-head speed he generates.

Often, on one of his 90 or so paid appearances a year, a player begs him to hit with the player’s driver. Fister always warns that he won’t pay if the club breaks.

Usually, after three or four swings, something gives and the club shatters. “They love it,” he says. “They want me to autograph it.”

This particular morning, two new driver heads arrive in the mail, and Fister uses his kitchen counter as a workbench while he glues them onto shafts. Eager to try them out, he heads for Chenal Country Club.

He hits balls almost every day. Some driving ranges hate to see him coming because his best launches mean lost golf balls.

“People want to look at the driver,” he says. “They think it’s Kryptonite or something. There is no cork in my bat. There is no secret to it. It’s how fast you can swing the club.”

He grabs one of three 50-inch drivers propped against a stand and bangs ball after ball off 3-inch tees that splinter after a couple of whacks. He says his club-head speed is best after 20 or 30 shots.

“Tie down your patio furniture,” says Kelly Kluska, who’s come out of the pro shop to watch.

Fister, a former 17-foot pole vaulter at Florida, turned to golf after he landed outside the pit and broke his back. The 6-foot-4, 235-pound Fister has a 4 or 5 handicap, but he’s been down to zero.

“I don’t make a penny making a birdie on each hole,” he says. “Everything I have is from long driving.”

He began getting paid for hitting the ball a long way in 1987 and juggled that with another job for a few years. Fister was a finalist in the North American Long Drive championship in 1993 and 1994 and won the title in 1995. At the end of 1996, his wife, Karen, quit her job as an accountant and he gave up his regular paycheck. Between them, they were making about $80,000 at the time.

They never looked back.

In addition to the exhibitions, the 38-year-old Fister does commercials for companies that make golf balls (Dunlop) and club shafts (Penley). One golf-ball ad came from his reply to an ad representative who asked him to hit a ball 280 yards: “If you only hit it 280 yards, you topped it.”

The ad man gobbled that up--and put it on Dunlop posters.

At the public outings, a local top gun--someone who hits it longer than anyone else around--is usually keen to go against Fister.

Such was the case with a 6-foot-6 former football player at an exhibition in Washington state. In 38-degree temperatures and into a stout headwind, Fister was smashing the ball 290 to 300 yards.

The local let it be known that he hit them out of the driving range. Fister invited the challenger to the tee and, after a couple of bad misses, the guy pounded one and began posing.

It came down at the 240-yard mark.

At appearances, he reads the audience and varies his spiel, mixing trick shots, ad libs and jokes at his own expense.

In his small office off the family laundry room, he reaches into a folder and pulls out scorecards signed by President Clinton and Arnold Palmer. Clinton, visiting in September 1997, “laughed when he saw how far I hit it,” Fister says.

That’s the standard response, he adds. “They don’t know what to say.”

The folder of scorecards is just part of his collection. The walls are crowded with framed stories and clippings, most of them about Fister.

He saves them because he treasures the mementos his grandmother passed along about his father, a former pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals’ system, and he wants his two boys to be proud of him.

High on his list is a newspaper photo of his father and Stan Musial. When the Cardinals slugger shared a celebrity outing with Fister, the golfer screwed up his courage and asked him to autograph the photo.

He’s proud that he’s reached the finals of the Long Drive championship every year since 1993 and would love to dethrone four-time champion Jason Zuback in the competition at Mesquite, Nev., in October. Zuback won with 376 yards last year; Fister’s best was 360.

Fister is one of the few who makes a living smashing golf balls; he hopes a corporate sponsor will help the tour become a once-a-month event.

Fister’s appearances wind down in late fall, and he’s at home for a few months with Karen, 3 1/2-year-old Beau and 1-year-old Palmer.

“Beau knows daddy’s a golfer,” Fister says. “He knows who Tiger Woods is. He knows who Jack Nicklaus is. He knows his daddy hits it farther.”