A few days back, a TikTok account with the handle @rjisntfunny revealed a cheating story that has shocked the golf community. He said that a golfer playing the Member-Member Tournament at WingHaven GC cheated by placing his ball in the cup of the par-three fourth before the round began. While @rjisntfunny didn’t reveal the golfer’s name, people realized it was Zach Holland, a plus-2 handicap amateur who previously played college golf at a junior college and later had what he described as “a cup of coffee” at Eastern Illinois University.

While Holland did resign from the club after the scandal was out, he did not speak about it until recently, when he appeared on The Morning After STL show to admit his mistake. When asked on the episode about the motivation behind the stunt, he offered little explanation.

“I don’t really know. I’ve talked to people, and there really is no motivation. It’s just complete stupidity, and we were giving two shots back to the field, and that’s not an excuse. There’s no excuse for what happened,” said Zach Holland.

“But to answer your question, we were giving two shots back to the field, and I went about it just completely and utterly the wrong way. And like the worst part is the downfall that it has and the trust of my family.”

The Member-Member event, which had a cash pot for a hole-in-one, had Holland in the first group. Before the round began, he set up an excuse by telling his group that his grandmother had been having health issues and that he might need to take an urgent call.When they reached the third green, Holland claimed he was receiving the call and asked if he could run ahead to tee off on the fourth hole to maintain the pace of play. Everyone agreed, and he told them he would meet them on the tee when he finished his call.

When the rest of the group caught up to the par-three fourth hole, they asked Holland how he had fared with his tee shot. He casually brushed it off, saying he “thinned it a bit” and couldn’t see where it landed. Upon reaching the green, they found a ball in the cup and everyone celebrated the hole-in-one.

Except that it was not a hole-in-one.

CCTV cameras near the maintenance shed of the club showed that Zach Holland had driven his car near the hole before the round began. What he did was create a fake bounce on the green and place his ball in the cup to make it appear like it was a hole-in-one.

While he did admit everything, there was one correction he made to @rjisntfunny’s story. The claim was that there were cameras around the fourth hole’s green, which helped catch Holland cheating.

However, the golfer said that there were cameras near the maintenance shed, where he parked his car, but there were none around the green. It was he who admitted his mistake and told the general manager that he himself placed the ball in the cup.

Holland says his family does not deserve the backlash

After the story spread, Holland says he has been flooded with messages from strangers attacking him and his family.

“Not like I know people say he’s only sorry because he got caught. Like that may have been true at first. But like the messages that are going to me, that I’m just somebody to attack,” said Holland.

“People that I’ve never met in my life; people that don’t know me; people that have no clue who I am. They just want to attack. And I get it. I opened up the door to that. That’s fine. I can take that. But my family doesn’t deserve that.”

He has two kids who are currently under three, and he does not want people to pick on them or say harsh things to them for something that they had nothing to do with.

Zach Holland even revealed that he and his family are on a vacation, but it does not feel like one. He is aware that the dumb thing he did is likely to have severe consequences. In golf, reputation stays with a player for a long time, as seen in the case with Patrick Reed.

The 2018 Masters champion has long been portrayed as a villain for his history of rules controversies. Court filings later revealed that the constant “cheater” label caused Reed’s family to be harassed, leaving his young children to face severe bullying at school. It serves as a stark example of how public backlash in golf can quickly spill over onto a player’s family.

Holland remains resigned to the fact that this hole-in-one stunt will regularly be associated with him. However, he wants those consequences to be limited to him and not extend to his family.

Zach Holland is a strong amateur golfer who was described in social-media coverage as carrying a +2 handicap. He played college golf at Rend Lake College and later at William Carey University, but he did not pursue a professional golf career.

His game appears to have improved in later years: in 2025, he and Adam Tomicich won the St. Louis District Golf Association’s Benson event, and Holland finished tied for 13th at the district’s 35th Amateur Championship.

Zach Holland has admitted that his actions were a serious mistake with consequences that will likely follow him for a long time.