Closest to the pin and longest drive: on-course contests that add fun and revenue

The 30 best players in the world tee it up this week at East Lake, and one of the quiet numbers the broadcast keeps flashing is proximity to the hole — how close, in feet, each pro hits an approach. Pros obsess over it because precision is the whole game. Your Saturday outing can bottle that same thrill for a field that will never sniff the FedEx Cup, and it costs almost nothing to do. On-course contests — closest to the pin on a par-3, longest drive on a wide-open par-5 — are the cheapest, most reliable way to add a jolt of competition and a second stream of revenue to a day that would otherwise be a straight scramble. Every player, from the scratch golfer to the once-a-year hacker, gets one swing at a prize with their name on the board.

What are closest to the pin and longest drive?

They are two simple, single-shot contests layered on top of your main format. Closest to the pin picks one par-3, and whoever lands their tee shot nearest the hole — and holds the green — wins. Longest drive picks one hole, usually a straight par-5, and the player whose drive finishes farthest in the fairway wins. Both are decided by a marker the players move themselves as the day goes on, so they run with no staff and no scoring overhead. They sit neatly beside your headline hole-in-one contest: the ace is the rare, insured showpiece, while these two produce a winner every single time.

The appeal is that skill barely matters to the fun. A high-handicapper who flushes one drive all day can win longest drive outright, walk away with a prize, and tell that story for a year. That is exactly the kind of moment a mixed-ability field needs.

How do on-course contests make money?

On-course contests raise money two ways, and the smart move is to run both at once.

1. Sell the entry. Bundle closest-to-the-pin and longest-drive entry into a small optional add-on — the same "extras" package that carries mulligans and a skins pool. Players who want in pay a few dollars at registration, and because it is cheap and fun, most of the field opts in. That money flows straight to your cause with essentially no cost of goods behind it.
2. Sell the hole. Each contest hole is a ready-made sponsorship. A local business gets a sign on the tee — "Longest Drive, sponsored by ___" — and their name announced with the winner. Contest-hole signage is one of the easiest tiers to sell in your whole sponsorship menu, because the sponsor gets a specific, photographable moment attached to their name instead of a logo lost on a banner.

Do both and the same hole earns entry fees from the field and a sponsorship fee from a business, while the prize itself stays small. The margin is why these contests belong on every outing.

Set them up so they run themselves

The whole point is that they need no supervision, so mark them so no one can argue the result.

• Give each contest a proper marker. Stake a "Closest to the Pin" sign near the green with a stack of small marker cards, or a proximity marker players slide to their ball. When someone beats the current mark, they write their name and move the marker; the next player either beats it or leaves it. The last name standing wins.
• Write the rule on the sign. State the one condition that settles every dispute: the ball must finish on the green for closest to the pin, and in the fairway for longest drive. Without that line you will get an argument about a ball that trickled into the rough.
• Separate divisions if your field is wide. Many outings run a men's and a women's longest drive, or a gross and a net closest-to-pin, so one bomber does not own every prize. Decide this before you print the signs.
• Keep the prize modest and useful. A sleeve of premium balls, a pro-shop gift card, or a small trophy is plenty. The bragging rights carry the weight; the prize just makes it official.

Announce both winners at the awards ceremony alongside your team results, so the contest holes get their moment in front of the whole room and the sponsors hear their names called.

Let the platform keep the books

The one place these contests get messy is reconciliation — matching entry-fee opt-ins to players, tracking which holes a sponsor bought, and reporting what each add-on actually raised. Running your event on Greenside Golf folds the contest entries into the same registration flow as everything else, so a player checks the box, pays, and lands on your roster already marked as in the pool, while contest-hole sponsors sit on the same event page as the rest of your inventory. When the day ends, the money each contest raised reports back in one place instead of living on a volunteer's memory and a shoebox of cards.

Pick your par-3, pick your par-5, print two signs, and sell the entry and the hole. On-course contests are the rare outing upgrade that makes the day more fun and the fundraiser bigger at the same time — the closest thing to free money your event will find.