iStockphoto / robertcicchetti
Hitting a hole-in-one to win a car during a charity golf tournament is about as good as it can possibly get for an amateur golfer and that’s exactly what happened for Linda Chen back in May.
Except she is now embroiled in a legal battle with the tournament who is refusing to pay up, saying she violated the rules by not disclosing her past as a professional between 1995 and 1996.
Linda Chen notched an ace at the Isleworth Golf & Country Club in Windermere, Florida back on May 22nd. It was during a charity golf tournament for Nova Southeastern University in Florida.
Linda has been a registered amateur with the USGA for the past 15 years but she was a professional golfer between 1995 and 1996.
A legal battle is now playing out as she is suing the tournament for the car or the car’s value, but the tournament contends that because she was previously a professional and didn’t disclose this, she’s ineligible.
For those unaware, golf tournaments (almost always) take out hole-in-one insurance for grand prizes like this Mercedes-Benz. It is exponentially cheaper in the long run to pay for hole-in-one insurance than eat the cost of a $90K car and is an industry-wide practice.
According to a report from Fox News, Ace Hole In One is the insurance agency behind the tournament’s hole-in-one promotion and the president of the company maintains that Linda Chen signed an affidavit claiming she was never a professional golfer. Furthermore, they point to her LinkedIn profile as evidence that she was hiding the past.
Tournament Golf Event owner Timothy Galvin told Fox News via email “If you look at Linda Chen’s LinkedIn page, she makes no mention of her amateur status. She made no mention of it AHEAD of the tournament. There were other professional golfers in the event who informed the tournament of their status. That’s all Ms. Chen had to do ahead of time and this could have prevented how things are going.”
If you are reading this and were a former golfer and don’t have that added to your LinkedIn, you might want to go update your LinkedIn profile.
Of course, from her perspective this is an open-and-shut case. She hit a hole-in-one and won the Mercedes-Benz prize. The tournament denied her the car via email in June which triggered this chain of legal events. Now it is up to the courts to decide whether or not she will receive the car or the $90,000 prize equivalent.