You can win $1 million at this amateur golf competition – but you’ll have to beat the bandits!

The Million Dollar Round provides amateur golfers with a chance to win life-changing money.

Attention club-level golfers – particularly those with suspect handicaps! Now’s your chance to play for something more substantial than another sleeve of balls in the Sunday morning swindle.

Applications are now open for ‘The Million Dollar Round’, where you’ve guessed it, only 18 holes of matchplay golf could stand between you and a seven-figure payday.

The competition will see 4,096 players go head-to-head in a series of “local” knockout matches players from their approximate geographic area until the semi-final stages where the final four players will be whisked off to a currently undisclosed “luxury” resort for the big money shootout.

To be in with a shot at the jackpot, it seems players will have to come through ten self-funded rounds that will likely see them drawn against players from out of State as the field gets whittled down. For example, if a player from South Carolina is drawn against a player from Florida, the pair might agree on staging the match in Georgia for example.

This could get costly, and that’s before the $495 entrance fee.

There is set to be a separate men’s and women’s category, and players will have three weeks to complete each round. I make that seven months before we even get to the playoff stages!

But costs and logistics aside, the concept of providing the average weekend hacker with a chance to experience standing over a knee-knocking four-footer worth $1 million, is still pretty cool.

It’s the exact vision self-confessed disruptor and entrepreneur Guy de Havillande had when devising ‘The Million Dollar Round’, which also confusingly goes by the name ‘The People’s Tournament’.

“I understand that a tour professional is in a different league, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t get the chance to taste that excitement, and that level of reward,” says de Havillande.

“In the words of Fuzzy Zoeller: ‘All I want is a chance to choke’.”

For those unfortunate 2,048 golfers dumped out in round one, however, many of whom won’t even make it to the 18th tee, a $50 green fee and accompanying travel expenses on top of the initial $495 outlay doesn’t scream value for money.

But ‘you have to be in it to win it’, as the saying goes and if you can rattle together back-to-back wins, your theoretical chances of becoming a millionaire have gone from one in 4,096, down to one in 1,024. A few wins later you’re in the last 128 and perhaps you can dare to dream.

Just making the last four guarantees you $100K, with $175K and $350K reserved for third and second place respectively.

And considering the average American Lotto player forks out in the region of $350 per year on a one in eight million chance of winning prizes of $1 million or more, these golf odds start to feel ever more in your favor.

Even more so if you’re a seasoned ‘sandbagger’, a term used to describe a golfer who manipulates their golf handicap to keep it artificially high, thus providing them with an unfair advantage.

Every club has their fair share. You know, the guys carding Stableford score in the mid-40s at the annual Club Championships year after year.

It’s the one obvious area where the whole concept could come crashing down, particularly with $1 million on the line, admits de Havillande.

“When you’re dealing with that level of money and human nature, the temptation to ‘sandbag’ or to cheat is enormous and by virtue of the remote nature [of the competition] there is nothing we can do to make it watertight.

“It’s down to the two players on the day and if you feel something is wrong, you report it to us and we will make a ruling which they are bound to accept. But there is nothing I can do to completely remove the possibility that the guy turning up pretending to be a 24 [handicapper], is actually a 3.”

Something tells me there’s going to be a fair amount of adjudication requests coming de Havillande’s way when the inaugural America-wide competition tees off early in 2025!

Players must have a USGA handicap for strokes to apply, although there is nothing stopping a highly competent player without an official handicap from putting in a few erroneous cards in the lead-up.

Call me cynical, but unfortunately, it’s a difficult limitation to see past, and we can only hope that the minority doesn’t spoil this unique experience for those it’s designed for.

I’m hoping to be proved wrong, and if it turns out to be the success de Havillande believes it will be, then bandits across Europe can look forward to their shot at the jackpot when the competition makes its planned debut across the Atlantic.

US citizens can register for the inaugural ‘Million Dollar Round’ here.

About the author

Ross Tugwood – Senior Digital Writer

Ross Tugwood is a Senior Digital Writer for todays-golfer.com, specializing in data, analytics, science, and innovation.

Ross is passionate about optimizing sports performance and has a decade of experience working with professional athletes and coaches for British Athletics, the UK Sports Institute, and Team GB.

He is an NCTJ-accredited journalist with post-graduate degrees in Performance Analysis and Sports Journalism, enabling him to critically analyze and review the latest golf equipment and technology to help you make better-informed buying decisions.