Karr wins truck with hole-in-one at football booster tournament

Bob Karr picked an opportune time to make his first-ever hole-in-one.

With a new Chevy Silverado offered as a prize for any golfer who could ace the 169-yard fifth hole at The Duke at Rancho El Dorado during Saturday’s Maricopa Rams Football Golf Tournament, Karr hit his tee shot squarely with an 8-iron. He immediately thought that it had a chance.

“You never know if it is going to go in, but it looked like it was right at the pin,” said Karr, a 60-year-old Scottsdale resident. “It looked like it would be a good shot on the green. It bounced, and then it bounced a second time, and then it rolled a little bit and just disappeared. It fell in the hole.”

The thrill for Karr was twofold, as he realized that not only had he  just converted the initial ace of his long golfing career, but also that he would be receiving a $39,000 truck as a reward, courtesy of hole-in-one sponsor Henry Brown Automotive of Casa Grande.

“How sweet is that?” Karr said.

Chris Guerrero, general manager of the Henry Brown Chevrolet dealership, said that the company has provided hole-in-one sponsorships at numerous community events. “But this is the first one where a person actually won the vehicle,” he said.

Guerrero said the dealership is more than happy to award the 2010 Chevy Silverado Extended Cab to Karr.

“We are probably just as excited as the winner is,” Guerrero said. “We have a huge customer base in Maricopa. We like to get involved in community-sponsored events. This was a really good cause for the Maricopa High School football team. When this gentleman won, it made it that much more exciting.”

Karr was playing The Duke golf course for the first time, as part of a foursome that included his Montpelier US Insurance Company co-workers Dick Nenaber, Bill Kiesler and Pat Porter.
Dick Nenaber is the uncle of Maricopa High School football coach Cory Nenaber, who also played in Saturday’s golf tournament.

“It was fantastic,” Cory Nenaber said about the fundraising event, which was hosted by the Maricopa Rams Football Booster Club. “We had 136 golfers, and we raised a pretty significant amount of money. It was a great environment.”

Booster club member Mary Wilson, who helped to coordinate the tournament, said that a net total of $6,000 was raised to benefit the Maricopa High School football program.

“It is exciting because it is our first year and because of how successful it was,” Wilson said. “It turned out just phenomenal. We want to invite the public to come out next year. We are going to continue to do this fundraiser. We had huge support from our area for our golf tournament.”

The event attracted 21 hole sponsors, along with two hole-in-one sponsors – Henry Brown Automotive and Glenn Jones Ford, a Casa Grande dealership which offered a 2010 Ford Focus as a prize.

A Golf Digest article from March 2000 estimates the odds of a golfer acing a designated hole during a single round at 20,000-to-1. While nobody beat the odds on Saturday to win the Ford Focus, Karr was looking forward to picking up his new Chevy Silverado from Henry Brown Automotive.

“The tournament was just wonderful,” Karr said Monday. “I was just ecstatic. I’m still on cloud nine.”

In addition to Karr’s hole-in-one prize, the tournament presented awards to the top-scoring foursomes as well as the golfers who hit the longest drives.

Here is the list of winners, as provided by the Maricopa Rams Football Booster Club and The Duke at Rancho El Dorado:

First place: Newman, Newman, Amarrosa, Barnes
Second place: Clayton Smith Group
Third place: Mike Wilson, Spencer Wilson, Paul Glennon, Barry Staehs
Longest drive, women: Lindi Covarrubias
Longest drive, men: Marshall Mortley

Photos courtesy of Karen Nechamkin