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Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning is one of the top college football coaches in the nation.
What he’s not, however, is an elite golfer. Which is how we ended up here — with Lanning beefing with Tiger Woods over the validity of his first career hole-in-one.
The story comes from Brett McMurphy of Action Network, who published a story on Tuesday about the best golfers among college football head coaches.
Lanning’s 16.7 handicap failed to land him among the top 10. But he did tell McMurphy about his hole-in-one on the the 61-yard seventh hole at The Hay, Pebble Beach’s nine-hole par-3 course.
Some would argue that it doesn’t officially count as a hole-in-one because it came on a par-3 course.
I would tend to agree.
But Lanning does not. So, to verify, he asked for a bit of help.
Oregon’s golf coach, Casey Martin, was a teammate of Tiger Woods at Stanford University and remains friendly with Woods. Martin suggested that Lanning reach out to Woods to verify whether or not his hole-in-one was legit.
Woods backed Lanning’s beliefs…sort of.
“Yes, it counts. I also made my first hole-in-one on a Par 3 course – when I was 8,” he said.
Now, that’s (for my money) the greatest golfer of all-time talking. So you gotta take it with a grain of salt. But talk about a brutal own.
Lanning, however, might be somewhat of a good luck charm for Woods. McMurphy notes that while he’s a huge golf fan, the Oregon head coach has only attended The Masters once, in 2019 when Woods won.
As for those rankings we talked about earlier?
UAB head coach and former NFL QB Trent Dilfer leads the way with a 0.1 handicap. That’s by far the best of any coach on McMurphy’s list. Auburn coach Hugh Freeze is second at 4.6 followed by Jason Candle of Toledo at 5.6.