This week at the GANT Open it is impossible not to notice the brand new speedboat parked on the lawn outside the clubhouse at Turku’s Aura GC, the new venue for the tournament this year.
As if winning a tournament on the European Challenge Tour was not enough of a trophy, an added incentive for the players comes on the par three second hole, where the boat is being offered as a hole-in-one prize.
Lars Lӧnnqvist, CEO of Pro Fashion Finland and main sponsor of this event through his association with GANT, has generously offered the prize and thinks, with the quality of the field, there is every chance one of the players could be sailing home in it this week.
He said: “This week there are so many good players, and they play the course four times – in fact five, because they could have made a hole-in-one in the Pro-Am and it would have counted.
“There’s every chance one of these players will get it this week – we’ve had someone get within a few inches in the past.
“I’ve been sponsoring events on the Nordic League for ten years now and have offered a boat as a prize every year, but so far nobody has won it.
“Last year I was so busy with my businesses that I forgot to take out insurance for it, so I spent the whole week sweating in case someone won it – it’s about €60,000, so it’s an expensive prize to be giving away yourself!
“As a boat it’s fantastic. I have two of them myself and they are great – they’re unsinkable, if you cut it in half you can still drive the boat, it’s so balanced.
“It has a big engine, 150 horsepower, so it can go very fast, but it’s equally good in rough sea, so it’s a good boat and a great prize. It would be great for the tournament to see someone win it this week.”
However, anyone with their eyes on the prize would be advised to take their shot sooner rather than later, because Lӧnnqvist warned that this is a one-time offer.
“It will be a lottery if two or three make a hole-in-one!” he said. “I think we will be alright though, statistically that is very unlikely – to be honest we’ve never really thought about it!
“It would be the first one to make it who would win the boat, because two players cannot do it at the same time, and we only have one boat.”
