{"id":460356,"date":"2026-02-07T20:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T20:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/460356\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T20:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T20:18:13","slug":"pitching-in-golf-pool-generates-60000-and-counting-for-various-charities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/460356\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitching in: Golf pool generates $60,000 and counting for various charities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Rob Holmes in Toronto. He’s been running a Masters golf pool every year for more than 30 years, with 25 per cent of the proceeds going to several charities.Supplied<\/p>\n

The organizer: Rob Holmes<\/p>\n

The pitch: Raising $60,000 and climbing<\/p>\n

The cause: Various charities<\/p>\n

Rob Holmes has always been a sports fanatic, so it was no surprise when he launched a Masters Tournament office pool back in 1993.<\/p>\n

Mr. Holmes was doing audit work with PwC at the time and around 20 colleagues joined. He had initially wanted to do an NCAA basketball pool but there were more golf fans in the office. <\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody thought it was fun. So next year came around and I put it together again,\u201d Mr. Holmes recalled from his home in Toronto. <\/p>\n

He kept up the pool after he left PwC for Nike Inc. and later ASICS Corp. The number of entrants \u2013 who initially chipped in $10 each \u2013 grew from 20 to several hundred.<\/p>\n

Running the pool started to become too much work, and Mr. Holmes, 55, nearly gave it up in 2012 until his brother came up with an idea. He suggested doubling the entry fee to $20 and donating a quarter of the proceeds to charity. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018That\u2019s a good idea. I can suck it up a little bit and do the work, as long as I know money is going to charity,\u2019\u201d Mr. Holmes said. He also pledged to top up the donations by 50 per cent.<\/p>\n

He thought the number of entrants would fall back from 500 to 300. Instead it kept growing. Last year, around 1,200 people participated. <\/p>\n

So far the pool has raised around $60,000 for several charities including Toronto\u2019s Hospital for Sick Children, Make-A-Wish Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society and Toronto\u2019s Daily Food Bank. <\/p>\n

Mr. Holmes donates the tax refund on the contributions back to the charities. \u201cI get zero tax benefit at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s become famous among participants for his notes and analysis. And while he\u2019s been running the pool for more than 30 years, he\u2019s never won or even cracked the top seven, which win prize money. But he did get to attend the Masters a couple of times, which has more than made up for his poor showing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Rob Holmes in Toronto. He’s been running a Masters golf pool every year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,2922,82],"class_list":["post-460356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-noastack","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}