MariAn Gail Brown: When a dealership and its insurer stiff a charity golf tournament player

Don DiMartino watched his ball sail high in the air, missing a couple of sand traps at the Mohegan Sun Country Club's Pautipaug Golf Course in Baltic and sink into the 17th hole. Just like that. Around him pandemonium breaks out. It isn't every day that an amateur golfer scores a hole in one. People cheer. They slap him on the back. There are high fives all around. That's because this hole-in-one on July 19 at the American Liver Foundation charity tournament is special. The signs on the green proclaim: "Hole in One Wins! Ford Escape." For emphasis, Girard Ford, the dealer who sponsored the contest even has a gleaming black 2012 Ford Escape parked on the fairway. "I saw the ball go in and it took a bit for all of this to sink in, that I'd aced the hole," DiMartino says. "This is something every golfer dreams of -- it was amazing. I was stunned." After all the congratulations from his fellow golfers, the tournament organizers and golf pros at Pautipaug and even well-wishes later on from Girard Ford, DiMartino expected he'd see a Ford Escape in the driveway of his Fairfield home. He was wrong. First there were all the usual hoops prize winners are put through by a sponsor. He had to have signed statements from witnesses. He had to submit his score card. He had to attest to the distance between the tee and the hole. It measured 157 yards. What separates him from his promised prize, which turns out to be a three-year lease on a Ford Escape, is 13 yards. Girard Ford refuses to give DiMartino his wheels because it says that the insurance policy the car dealer took out with the J. Ryder Group in Michigan call for a hole in one to be 170 yards. None of that information was ever communicated to DiMartino or any other golfer, executives with the American Liver Foundation say. There was no fine print on the glossy signage Girard Ford staked on the 17th green the day of the event. And there was no *asterisk anywhere that might alert players that there were additional terms and conditions -- apart from achieving a hole in one -- that had to be satisfied. "You can't imagine how bad I feel that he didn't win a car from us," Mike Collins, general manager of Girard Ford, says. "There were mistakes made. Maybe I should have been there that day and I might have seen that they staked the wrong distance for the tee. But rules are rules." Reciting truisms is fine. The problem is how could DiMartino follow a mandate he was unaware existed. It's illogical for Girard Ford to expect this when it never mentions this little detail that only appears in its contract with the J.Ryder Group. "This is a charity event. People come because they want to support this organization. They don't expect to win prizes," Collins says. "This guy should get over it and forget about it." It being the car. Easy for Collins to say. He couldn't care less that DiMartino put his older high mileage car, a Nissan Altima, up for sale on Craigsist, found a buyer and had to back out of that sale because his winning wheels haven't arrived. There is a bright spot on the horizon. In Your Corner contacted top brass at the American Liver Foundation and negotiated a deal that satisfies both the charity and DiMartino. "We are going to do what's right," Diann Rohde, vice president of communications for the American Liver Foundation, says. "This golfer won fair and square. He hit a hole in one. We will get him the car he's won, but we'll get it from another dealership."