Jerry Swanson in recovering his drive

With a mighty grunt, Jerry Swanson launches his final drive of a 30-minute practice session down the first fairway at Grays Harbor Country Club.

The drive is measured at 372 yards.

“Last year, it was 372 with the wind,” Swanson recalls with a slight smile. “This year, it was 372 against the wind. So we’re making progress.”

That’s progress that can be measured in Swanson’s life both on and off the golf course.

The 51-year-old Raymond High School graduate, now a resident of Gresham, Ore., has qualified for his third successive appearance in the Remax World Long Drive Championship. He’ll be competing in the Senior and Super Senior divisions Sept. 21-23 in Mesquite, Nev., and gives himself an excellent chance to improve on last year’s ninth-place finishes in both divisions.

“I’ve gotten in better shape, I’ve gotten stronger and faster,” he said. “If I don’t win, it will be disappointing. But I expect to win.”

He’s also been winning an ongoing battle with alcohol abuse. Although he doesn’t like to put a timetable on his sobriety, Swanson said he has been largely clean for the past three years. The memories of harrowing past experiences, however, remain vivid.

“I’ve been in countless treatment centers, received several DUIs and have spent time in mental hospitals — voluntarily,” he said. “I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know what.”

The starting football quarterback and basketball point guard at Raymond prior to his 1981 graduation, Swanson said he didn’t drink until he played basketball and golf at Lower Columbia College in Longview (he was subsequently a student at Grays Harbor College and Western Washington and Central Washington universities).

“When I got to college, all the basketball players drank, so I drank. And all the golfers smoked pot, so I smoked pot,” he related. “When all my buddies were able to handle it coming out of college, I wasn’t able to do so. I enjoyed having fun too much.”

Swanson said he wasn’t a constant drinker, but was prone to binges that lasted two to three weeks at a time.

“These binge episodes would take place once every year or two generally, not a month-to-month thing,” he said. “The binges were extreme, but far apart.”

On his way to a hospital for treatment in 1992, Swanson began embracing Christianity as a means of conquering his inner demons.

“For the next seven years, I never thought about drinking once and became a Christian man at that time,” he remembered.

In 1999, however, he said he “went astray from my spirituality and (developed) the desire to escape the earth, escape from reality. A couple of times a year, I’d go on binges again. I struggled with it for the next 10 to 12 years.”

By his own admission, Swanson hit bottom in 2007. By this time a real estate developer in Oregon, he spent some 14 days in a Portland-area hospital, undergoing treatment for potential kidney failure.

In desperation, a couple of friends convinced him to enroll in the Portland Rescue Mission’s rehab program. The program is designed to provide food, shelter and vital services to people affected by homelessness, addiction and abuse.

Although not homeless, Swanson spent more than a year in the program. He now refers to it as “the most miserable experience of my life,” but acknowledges that it eventually paid dividends.

“Ninety percent of the guys in there are fresh off the streets,” he said. “For a year, I went through the men’s program, but what I mostly did was serve the homeless for 14 months. I was living with 400, 500, 600 men and three of those people are (now) in prison for murder. There were bad guys and some good guys. I wasn’t a street person, but I could have been, I guess. It was an awful place, but the program helps people.”

It wasn’t until 2011 that Swanson believes he turned his life around. He met his wife, Jane, that year. He also credits his father, David (who now lives in Vancouver, Wash.), late mother, Joann and his 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Olivia, with assisting in his recovery.

Swanson stops well short, however, of proclaiming himself cured and even admits to a setback during the past three years.

“There will be no AA-type sober date, but it’s been quite some time since alcohol knocked me down,” he said. “To be realistic, it could knock me down tomorrow. If it did, I would get right back up and keep fighting.”

His recovery also coincided with the time he began entering long-drive contests as a method of supplementing his income.

A golfer since the age of 6 (he learned the sport from the late Willapa Harbor Golf Course pro Hank Runge), Swanson was the top player on the Raymond High team for three years before playing at Lower Columbia.

At 6-foot-2 and 199 pounds, Swanson is far from huge by the standards of long-drive specialists. But he generates tremendous clubhead speed.

For help in improving his distance, Swanson turned to former Lower Columbia teammate Jay Gurrad, now the pro at Grays Harbor Country Club. Gurrad has served as his swing coach for the past 2 1/2 years and will accompany him to Nevada this month.

In addition to practicing almost daily at the Sah-Hah-Lee Golf Course and driving range in Clackamas, Ore., and lifting weights some three to four times per week, Swanson periodically journeys to Grays Harbor Country Club to work out under Gurrad’s supervision.

“His strength, dedication and flexibility are the keys to his success,” Gurrad said. “I’m just the swing coach. All the credit goes to him for all the hard work over the years.”

The Remax World Long Drive qualifiers compete in a series of heats, with the top few in each heat advancing to the next round. Each entrant receives six shots per heat, with only the longest drive hit into a 50-yard-wide grid counting.

Although he cranked out a career-long drive of 393 yards at one stage of last year’s event, Swanson fell one yard shy of advancing to the semifinals last year.

Having dropped eight pounds while increasing his strength during the past year, Swanson is supremely confident entering this year’s competition.

“If I can put the ball in the grid, I can win both divisions,” he said. “If I have problems with my nerves, that’s the only thing that could stop me from winning. The other guys cannot outhit me — my best ball can beat their best ball. To me, my goals aren’t set high, they’re set where they need to be.”

“He’s very deserving of the spot (in the field),” Gurrad agrees. “It’s just a matter of hitting the grid at the right time.”

Swanson candidly admits that he is out for more than the glory of a victory. Attempting to transition from his current job with the Bonneville Power Administration into a career in the golf-fitness industry, he confirms that he needs the prize money (estimated at between $40,000 and $50,000 for two wins) the event offers.

While somewhat conflicted over his decision to publicly disclose his addiction (“It’s pretty embarrassing”), he also hopes to serve as an inspiration to those with similar problems.

“If I could help somebody avoid death, that’s what the purpose of this is,” he said. “If God will do it for me, he’ll do it for anybody. People can get out of this. I’ve not only gotten out of this, I’ve gone to the pinnacle of a sport, which I could never do by getting drunk every day.”