A hole in one, a Halloween hangover and one million dollars
We’ve all got our favourite golf story. One that can defy the possible, exalt friends to legendary status or forever relegate them to the gutter of history thanks to a final hole shank.
We see your scores on VPAR and who has beaten who, but perhaps not all the juicy details behind them. Here is one of our favourites, but be sure to send in your best stories, via DM on Instagram & Twitter @vpargolf and we will reshare some of the best submissions!
On the morning of November 1st 1992, Jason Bohn woke up on the floor of his apartment in Tuscaloosa Alabama with a kick from his housemate.
“You’ve got to get up” his housemate said “you’ve got the semi-finals of that golf thing..”
Jason’s thumping headache from too much Halloween punch the night before trumped the necessary will power to get up and his floorboard pillow became comfortable once more.
A few minutes later, the housemate was at it again with more success. “Alright, alright” Bohn said “I’ll get up just to hear you shut up”.
Costume Halloween parties were a big deal in Tuscaloosa. The whole neighbourhood was celebrating and before Jason got home at 4.30am he had more or less visited the entire county.
A week earlier, Jason had borrowed $10 from a friend for ten shots at hitting a golf ball into a ten-foot circle from 135 yards. For every ball in the circle, he would get one shot the following weekend in the semi-finals of the contest.
“I hit one ball in the circle, so I had one shot in the semis,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about it again until that morning.”
Thanks to his housemate’s persistence, a bleary-eyed Jason just about arrived at the golf course. He was drawn third out of one hundred and fifty entrants to hit his shot, with the twelve best progressing to the final.
Jason was delighted that he was so early, knowing that a return to bed would be sooner than expected.
“I went third, hit my ball to 3 feet, 8 inches, went back to my car and took a nap. Our coach, Dick Spybey, did not like the way I looked. He knew what state I was in, saying I was a disgrace to the team and not properly representing the golf program”.
When woken up for the second time that morning, Bohn was informed of some better news. He was one of twelve to reach the finals, with guaranteed prizes for all and an unlikely million dollars for a hole in one!
“We were psyched. There were big-screen TVs, things like that,” Bohn remembered. “Then Coach Spybey tells us if we accepted any prize with a value of more than $500, we’d forfeit our NCAA eligibility.”
With a sarcastic glint in his eye, Bohn said to Spybey “Looks like I’m going pro, Coach, thanks for everything!”
Bohn chucked the ball down without a tee. Took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Then hit a heel cut 9 iron that took two hops and wham in it went.
Jason started running down the hole, throwing his club in the air and high stepping up the hill, when all of a sudden his body remembered what it had been through the night before and collapsed underneath him. Dirt and dust flew everywhere.
The excitement was initially about the fact that it was his first ever hole in one, let alone the million bucks.
As Bohn got up to the green his coach is standing there reiterating “if you sign this, you will lose your eligibility…” when Bohn cuts him off mid-way asking “where is the ****ing pen?! It’s one million dollars!”
Jason then proceeded to round up all his buddies, asking them to get out some cash to go party with the promise of an IOU – a list he still has. With a wad of cash in hand, Bohn strolled up to the Brass Monkey at 11.45pm (the county was dry on Sundays until midnight) and said to the landlord here is $1,100 let me know when we’re done.
By 3.30am they had opened up the rib shack next door and it was one hell of a party.
At 7am the next morning, SportsCenter flashed up on the TV much to the jubilation of everyone. The tone changed however when it informed the bar that Jason was 19 (and underage)… The owner quietly took Jason to one side of the bar, paid for his cab home and never spoke of it again.
The insurance company offered him $167k as a lump sum instead of the million. Instead Jason took $50k each year, for twenty years.
And each year when the cheque arrived in his mailbox on November 1st, he would get out the insurance video tape of the shot and make his family watch it over and over.
November 1st will forever be known as Jason Bohn day.