Holes-in-one make man a lucky loser

If the golf ball dropped in the hole, it would cost Mike Stalls' company $1 million.

Stalls used his best verbal mojo to help it anyway.

"Please go in, please go in, go in the hole," he coaxed last Monday, as the ball trickled across the green at Devils Ridge Golf Club in Holly Springs. When it dropped, he dashed wildly around the green, celebrating the biggest hit so far in a year of unprecedented losses for his Raleigh-based company.

Even before James Foley hit that 165-yard winner, Tournament Promotions of the Carolinas -- which organizes hole-in-one shootouts, putting contests and other side events at golf tournaments throughout the Southeast -- had already doled out nearly $400,000 in cash and prizes since Jan. 1, Stalls said. Among the string of winners were three at different tournaments on consecutive days in June, the last one claiming a $117,000 Maserati at a Raleigh event. Last month, it gave away an Infiniti at a Cary tournament.

"You can't find a number high enough for odds of a year like this one," Stalls said.

And he loves losing. Among the handful of companies that organize hoopla-generating side contests at tournaments, losing is winning. Paying out prizes means publicity for the company and the tournament sponsors it wants to keep happy.

And the real hit gets passed on to someone else, anyway: Stalls' insurance company pays when someone drives away in a new car or, like Foley, walks off with a big check.

"He's happy, we're happy for him, the sponsors are happy for him," Stalls said. "But the insurance company isn't real happy."

Even the insurance company, though, seemed a little excited this time, he said. "It's not like they have seen many of these, either," he said.

No one has. Stalls checked with other companies in his business and actuaries and thinks there have been no more than 10 payouts of $1 million.

Typically, insurance policies cover prizes from $10,000 and up. Premiums vary mainly based on the value of the prize and number of attempts that contestants can make. Stalls declined to say exactly what a premium costs for a $1 million contest but said it's usually in the $2,000 to $4,000 range.

Holes-in-one -- which conjure images of unicorns or hen's teeth -- seem almost routine in his world. There were three in a single wild contest he organized this year.

Indeed Stalls himself -- who played three times a week before "making the mistake of leaving banking for the business of golf" -- said he has shot three himself. Not for $1 million, or even a car, but once, at least, he claimed a more common country club purse.

"I won the bar tab," he said.