On 24 May 2025, I paid R100, took one swing, and walked off the par-3 R10,000 richer.
A year on, the cheque is still up on a wall in our Secunda office — made out to Isaac Tau, dated 24 May 2025, signed by Sandra Twala, the founder of Mothe Events. The signature beside hers reads: Witnessed & verified on the spot.
The setup
The format is the simplest thing in golf, which is also why it's the cruelest:
- One ball
- One swing
- The nominated par-3
- Sink it and the cash is yours
R100 to register. Cash, card, or EFT at the par-3 marshal table. A 4-ball partner and a Mothe Events marshal sign your ticket as your witnesses. 18+, ID at the ready. The R100 entry is non-refundable once the shot is taken — because that's what makes the prize real.
The swing
I'm not going to romanticise it. The ball went where I wanted it to go on the day it mattered. That has happened maybe five times in my golfing life. The marshal called the witness across. Sandra walked over. The cheque was already prepared with the name field blank.
The thing that made the moment land was not the money. It was the speed of payout. Hole-in-one challenges at corporate events usually involve insurance forms, photo verification, a four-week wait, a phone call you have to chase. Mothe Events pays on the spot. The cheque was filled out, signed, witnessed, and in my hand inside ten minutes of the ball going in.
Why I'm writing about it now
Because Grow Together or Grow Apart — the book Portia and I wrote and published this month — has a chapter about the Golf Course Problem. The argument is simple: nobody expects to play golf perfectly on their first swing, but everyone expects to love perfectly on their first relationship. The reason I can write that chapter with conviction is that I've spent enough time on real fairways to know what it feels like when the discipline finally clicks into a single moment. Once every five hundred swings. Sometimes never.
I owe Mothe Events the courtesy of saying it in public: that day was one of mine. Thank you.
The shout-out
Mothe Events is led by Sandra Twala and runs the kind of Hole-in-One Challenge that does what it says — instant cash, witnessed on the day, no insurance theatre. If you're organising a corporate golf day in South Africa and you want a prize structure that lands with your guests instead of dribbling out months later, talk to them.
- Phone: 071 471 7876
- Email: motheevents@gmail.com
- Web: motheevents.co.za
If you're tempted to enter the next one
One ball, one swing, R100 in. Witnessed and verified on the spot. You either walk off with R10,000 cash, or you walk off with a story. Both are worth more than R100.
If you're at the next Mothe Events challenge and you sink it — toast with Morara. The wines are at porshretail.co.za/collections/morara-wines, R150 a bottle. A bottle costs less than one and a half entries. Get on the course either way.
— Isaac Tau, Secunda, 29 May 2026