Is A Hole-In-One Contest Right for Your Tournament?

Robb Pritts, Atlanta Regional Tournament Sales Director

Imagine this: you're at a tournament and pull up to a par 3, where a new BMW is on display, just waiting for you to drive it home. Sure, there's a catch: to win, you've got to enter the contest and then make a hole-in-one. Not bad, right?

Let’s take a closer look at this contest from a tournament manager’s perspective. To pull off a hole-in-one contest you'll first need a sponsor. And no, it's not as easy as just calling the local car dealership and asking for a sponsorship. They get those calls daily and it’s not always easy to get a 'yes'. Plus, if you’re looking to make money on the sponsorship, you must account for the cost of insurance needed to insure the shot. Typically, you are looking at $400-600 to cover the cost of the vehicle or cash prize. Sometimes the dealership will incur that cost, but they normally won’t pay much over that.

In my experience, it is always better to get a non-dealership sponsor to support the insurance cost so you can sell your sponsorship for $1000-$1500, thus netting your organization a nice profit. The coordination then becomes managing to get a dealership that will have a vehicle for you the day of the event, and then letting them know that if there is a winner, the vehicle will be purchased from them: it's a win-win opportunity.

As the tournament director, you'll need to communicate with the golf club to see what hole would meet the criteria for the insurance. Typically, the yardage must be 165 yards or greater. You also need to check if a vehicle can be staged at the hole; sometimes getting a car to the hole for placement is harder than you think. And finally, a volunteer must be placed at the hole all day to witness the hole-in-one, and you may want to have several rotate out since otherwise that position may mean a 4-5 hour shift shitting in the hot sun.

Okay, so what if someone wins the car? Well, it then becomes a great opportunity for your event to receive media attention for your organization, the sponsor, and the winner. In your sponsorship package, be sure to offer a press release if there is a winner, and also include guarantee of a live presentation of delivery of the vehicle at the sponsor's place of business, with media invited.

A Hole-in-One Contest can be a great draw for your charity golf tournament. During one of my past events, I had a player get 2 Hole-In-One’s in one day, and one of them landed that player a new car as the prize. We were lucky enough to have a news crew at the event, and we quickly raced them out to the hole and filmed the winner retrieving his ball out of the cup. It was a great day for the player, the sponsor, and the charity! As a result of the media coverage, Bridgestone Golf was notified that the winner had used a Bridgestone ball, and the player was then also invited to an Atlanta Braves game to hit a shot to a flag in centerfield, versus two Atlanta Braves players. All this great media came about because of a Hole-in-One Contest on the course.