Wilco Nienaber hit an enormous 361-yard drive off the tee which gave Sean Crocker, positioned on the fairway, 140 yards for his second shot which he hit to four feet, where Min Woo Lee and Nicolai Højgaard were waiting to finish things off on the green. After a nervous wait, the record-breaking time of 24.75 seconds was confirmed, sparking exuberant celebrations from the four players.
The quartet became the third European Tour team to hold this GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title. Team France (made up of Raphael Jacquelin, Alexander Levy, Romain Wattel and Gregory Havret) on the very same hole at Real Club Valderrama in 2016 as part of the European Tour’s first ever GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ Official Attempt. This was then bettered a year later by a (Ian Poulter, Tyrrell Hatton, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Matthew Southgate) in Turkey, who set a time of 32.70 seconds at night under floodlights.
Crocker, Højgaard, Lee and Nienaber also join Thomas Detry and Marcus Armitage as GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title holders. In 2019, Thomas Detry set an astonishing new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the, playing a Par 5 hole in just one minute 29.62 seconds at Real Club de Golf Guadalmina also in Spain. Earlier this year, Marcus Armitage hit the ball 277m / 303 yards down a runway in York, UK into the front passenger seat of a moving BMW M8 convertible to take the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the Following on from the success of the live shows between 2016 and 2020, staged at iconic venues such as Edinburgh Castle in Scotland and the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, this year has seen the launch of a new era of the Hero Challenge.
This year, there will be three different style Hero Challenges from three locations across the European Tour calendar. Each will feature some of the best and brightest players in the world in a short-form social and digital video output, which will be supplemented by a more in-depth ‘behind-the-scenes’ broadcast show from each event. The of 2021 saw Ian Poulter and Tyrrell Hatton attempt to make a hole-in-one on the 14th hole at The Renaissance Club armed with just 50 balls.
