A cheating scandal has set the golf world alight.

Legal recruiter Zach Holland, 34, resigned in disgrace from his ritzy private members club in Missouri after getting caught faking a hole in one during a tournament, just to collect a meager cash prize.

Now his reputation as a ‘phenomenal’ golfer has been squarely put into question.

‘It’s essentially murder one,’ a member of WingHaven Country Club, where the scandal erupted from, told the Daily Mail.

Former clubmates have revealed that in the moments after claiming the prize-winning shot Holland sent video to a friends group chat, showing him celebrating the bogus feat by plucking his ball from the hole.

‘And then after the fact, to play it off the way he did with his so-called friends who he essentially betrayed and took money from… it’s psychopathic to an extent, it’s a mental illness, in my opinion,’ the irate former friend said.

To anyone who doesn’t play golf, it might be hard to understand what all the fuss is about. But golf is built on an honor code unlike almost any other sport. 

Players call their own penalties, keep their own scores and are trusted to do the right thing when nobody is watching.

Zach Holland admitted to faking a hole in one during a tournament in St. Louis, Missouri 

Legal recruiter Holland, 34, pictured with his wife, has since faced a major backlash

Golf’s emphasis on sportsmanship makes Holland’s actions all the more jarring, as club insiders have now claimed Holland has notched eyebrow-raising wins at other lavish clubs, and suggested his alleged sports betting habit fueled his plan to fake a hole in one. 

WingHaven was allegedly Holland’s third country club in the St. Charles County area in just five years, members have claimed. 

Members claimed he left his previous two clubs, Lake Forest and Old Hickory, under circumstances that have come under renewed scrutiny in light of the scandal.

At Old Hickory, Holland is alleged to have collected a hole-in-one pot on more than one occasion, with members claiming his wife was the only witness.

Old Hickory and Lake Forest did not respond to questions from the Daily Mail about Holland’s memberships or departures from the clubs.

Several members also described Holland as a heavy sports bettor, and speculated that money may have been a motivation for the scheme at WingHaven.

‘I played with him quite often. I know he’s a big sports bettor. I know he is quite active on gambling apps,’ one member said. ‘Our group chat suspicion is that there’s gotta be some monetary angle here.’

‘He bets on all of it, college football is a big thing, but he bets on baseball, he bets on golf, everything,’ another member said. 

The fourth hole at WingHaven Country Club, where Holland faked his hole in one shot

Holland did not respond to the Daily Mail’s requests for comment. Shortly after resigning his membership, Holland admitted to faking the hole in one and apologized for his actions on a local radio show.

‘I’m not a cheater on the golf course,’ Holland said on 1010 ESPN St. Louis. ‘I made a bad decision and I have to suffer the consequences.’ 

Members who routinely played with Holland said his genuine talent only made the scandal even harder to stomach.

‘He’s already a phenomenal player, legitimately good,’ a former friend and club mate said. ‘He has won amateur events.’

Resurfaced footage from a highly promoted 2021 amateur putting competition showed Holland proudly celebrating a victory on the green. 

‘And I’m like, Dude, is that not enough? Like, you’re already a legitimate plus two, why are you cheating?’ 

Despite his previous success, Holland’s reputation has been permanently and irreversibly damaged, members said, speculating that he would likely have to move out of state to outrun the stigma.

‘He’s done for,’ the club member said.

Holland admitted to faking the hole in one and apologized for his actions on a local radio show

On July 31, Holland signed up for WingHaven’s the hole-in-one club, something he had done since joining the club the year before.

The following morning, Holland arrived to play in the tournament, an hour before his morning tee time.

After reaching the third hole, Holland told his playing group his grandmother had fallen and was being taken to hospital. He warned that he might have to take an urgent phone call and told the others he would head to the next tee ahead of them to keep up ‘pace of play.’ 

That next hole was a par-three. 

When the group caught up with Holland, he told them he had already swung and ‘thinned’ a shot to the green. 

‘Maybe it went in,’ one member recalled him saying. 

When they reached the green, a Titleist was sitting in the cup. At 8.20am, Holland promptly messaged a group chat of WingHaven members, eager to show off his feat. 

‘Holy s***. He shoots, he scores,’ Holland wrote in the chat. 

His friends were ecstatic for him at first, and joked that he was on the hook for a big tab. 

‘This is the worst time to make a hole in one,’ the member wrote. ‘You’ll have 160 members drinking on your tab. We’ll see if we can get this up to $5,000.’

But while the messages rolled in, the first seeds of suspicion were already being planted.

One golfer privately remarked: ‘How does this guy get so lucky?’

In a statement, Winghaven’s assistant GM said the matter had been dealt with ‘promptly’ 

Later, more doubts began to emerge. 

None of Holland’s friends had clearly seen or heard the ball go in, and one member grew suspicious after rewatching Holland’s celebratory video and noticing the supposed pitch mark looked nothing like the deep craters left by that morning’s wet conditions.

The group compared notes and contacted assistant manager Matt Renner, who asked superintendent Andy Burley whether newly installed cameras near the fourth hole had captured anything.

Burley checked the footage, which showed Holland arriving at the fourth hole at around 6.20am that morning, an hour before his tee time. Holland was seen getting out of his vehicle and walking towards the fourth green.

He disappeared from view and returned roughly two minutes later.

The cameras did not capture Holland physically putting a ball in the cup, according to the member who was briefed on the footage. 

When club officials confronted Holland, he initially denied wrongdoing.

But upon being informed of the security footage, he quickly resigned his membership from WingHaven and his team’s tournament results were struck from the standings.

Away from golf, Holland had been regarded as friendly, generous and devoted to his wife and young family (pictured with wife)

The story became public days later when WingHaven issued an updated tournament result to members, and the shot that never was instantly reverberated around the golfing world.

Group chats and social media have been flooded with memes and AI-generated spoofs riffing on the grandmother excuse and its echoes of Happy Gilmore, where Adam Sandler’s title character takes up golf to pay for his sick grandmother’s medical bills.

Holland later admitted in an interview with a St Louis sports radio show that he had placed the ball in the hole.

‘I’m not a cheater on the golf course,’ he said. ‘I made a bad decision and I have to suffer the consequences.’

He described it as ‘the worst thing you can do on a golf course’.

‘You do something as dumb as I did, there are consequences for that,’ Holland said. ‘Some are very fair, some aren’t as fair.’

In a statement, Renner, WingHaven’s assistant GM, said the matter had been dealt with ‘promptly’ by the club.

‘We care deeply about the integrity of the game and the experience we provide for our members and guests. Because this situation involved the actions of an individual and has been resolved, we consider it closed and have no further comment.’

Away from golf, Holland had been regarded as friendly, generous and devoted to his wife and young family.

Resurfaced footage from 2021 showed an ecstatic Holland celebrate after sinking a putt during an amateur competition

On the course, however, one member said he had a different persona – ‘very competitive’, at times ‘bordering on arrogant’.

‘He’s very sure of himself, but he’s a very good player, so he can back up the talk,’ the member said.

That contradiction has left his friends struggling to understand how the man they knew could have engineered such an elaborate deception.

One friend said Holland called him the morning after the scandal broke.

‘He was very contrite, yeah, sick about it,’ the friend told the Daily Mail. ‘He said, ‘I need to get help.’ And I said, ‘You do.’

But the friend also told Holland he needed distance. 

‘I don’t really have much to say to you right now. I’m still processing everything. I hope you can find help and, in the foreseeable future, I can’t communicate with you.’