Hole in one when it matters

[matt85]

Nick Faldo did it in the Ryder Cup as well at the Belfry, which from what I can gather turned the tide of the match which Europe when onto win.

I would say that was pretty impressive.

[esad]

Two I know of, but not par 3s

1990 Bay Hill - Robert Gamez holed a shot from the fairway on 18 to beat Greg Norman by 1 stroke.

1983 Hawaiian Open - Isao Aoki holed a shot from the fairway on 18 to win by 1 stroke.

Not hole in one, but pretty much the same thing

Of course there is also the famed "shot heard 'round the world" in the 1935 Masters. Gene Sarazen holed a 235 yard 4-wood on 15 for a double eagle that tied him for the lead. He won the next day in a playoff.

[suzzer99]

Didn't Lee Trevino hit an ace for a huge payday in a skins game?

[mason55]

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Of course there is also the famed "shot heard 'round the world" in the 1935 Masters. Gene Sarazen holed a 235 yard 4-wood on 15 for a double eagle that tied him for the lead. He won the next day in a playoff.

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I had never heard about this but this is the kind of thing I was looking for. Thank you.

[legend42]

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[ QUOTE ]

Of course there is also the famed "shot heard 'round the world" in the 1935 Masters. Gene Sarazen holed a 235 yard 4-wood on 15 for a double eagle that tied him for the lead. He won the next day in a playoff.

[/ QUOTE ]

I had never heard about this but this is the kind of thing I was looking for. Thank you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Damn, and I was going to mention that one, too, but I thought it was too well-known and not do-or-die enough for what you were looking for. There are some great stories about it, including many reporters and spectators who left Sarazen's gallery right before this hole (he was 3 down with 4 to play) to see the "winner" (Craig Wood) finish up at 18.

[MicroBob]

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Hole in one insurance. Makes sense if you think about it but I hadn't. So your local course reduces variance for their promotion by buying insurance.

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This is common in a lot of spectator sports too.
A basketball team that does a million-dollar half-court shot type promotion usually bought insurance on it from some company.

Some baseball teams do promotions where some fan wins a ton of money if the pitcher throw a no-hitter that night or the 4th batter in the 6th inning hits a grand-slam or whatever.
These are all insurance type things a lot of the time.
They set up a booth at the Baseball Winter Meetings at the trade show right next to the guys who offer different types of stadium chairs or foam-fingers or whatever a minor-league or major-league team might be interested in.

They write out all kinds of different promotions and how much they can pay and how much it costs your team to buy such a promotion from them (so you pay $1000 or something for a 9-inning no-hitter promotion and the insurance company will pay out $20k to a fan if somebody on your team actually does it that year).

In the 1996 Florida State League All-Star game they drew a different fan for each inning and needed some crazy scenario to happen for that person to win $50k or something.
4th batter hits a grand-slam was one of them. All the others were pretty unrealistic too. Back-to-back HR's or something, stuff like that.

Except for one inning the promo was for somebody to steal home. Normally unrealistic...but you do have a bit more control on this one.
The manager of the east division squad was all set to try to do this for whatever fan had the chance to win.
They get the runner on 3rd.
The other team knows what's going on and they have a quick conference to briefly go over the situation.
Runner takes off but the catcher doesn't understand enough english so he promptly applies the tag because he didn't know he was supposed to back off.

So they came pretty close to getting that $50k for the fan but they didn't explain it to the catcher well enough.

[mason55]

Yeah, contest insurance is standard for pretty much all contests. Like when Pepsi had the "Who Wants to be a Billionaire" or whatever promo, I think there was 4 or 5 different levels of insurers and re-insurers.

[suzzer99]

[ QUOTE ]
Didn't Lee Trevino hit an ace for a huge payday in a skins game?

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Make me google it myself. Bastards.
Some good stuff about holes-in-one here.

"In 1987, Lee Trevino authored the richest swing in golf history, pocketing $1,140,000 for a hole-in-one during the Skins Game. As the ball went in the hole, the National Hole-in-One Association felt the pain. It insures the big-money prizes at golf events, and had written the policy for this tournament."

[andyfox]

Aoki did it once to win a tournament; I think he beat Jack Renner, but I might have that wrong.

Didn't Trevino make a million dollar hole in one in a skins game or something?

[andyfox]

I made one on 17 to pull even in my match. I would have won it with another one on 18, but the damn windmill came around and knocked my ball away.