[Photo: Sam Hodde]
Last May, Ben Griffin captured his first individual PGA Tour title at the Charles Schwab Challenge (he won the Zurich Classic a few weeks before while partnered with Andrew Novak). And like all recent winners at Colonial, he received one of the coolest trophies in golf for his gritty 12-under performance:
An old car.
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But not just any old car. In Griffin’s case, he took home a fully restored, powder-blue, 1992 Land Rover Defender – a do-anything, go-anywhere off-road machine. Unfortunately, 12 months later, Griffin has yet to fire up the legendary SUV and, as he explained at Colonial this week, it’s for a very good reason.
“It’s been an interesting journey with the 1992 Defender that I won. Unfortunately, when it was being transported to drop, to be dropped off in Florida, it got caught in a tractor-trailer fire and basically, it didn’t burn down, but it basically turned from Charles Schwab blue to black,” Griffin explained. “So it’s been in the works for about seven months of trying to bring it back to life. So I have not really had the chance to enjoy it yet. But we’re working on it, the Charles Schwab team, they’re doing a great job of getting that car back into working condition, similar to what we saw it looked like on the 10th tee when I won on Sunday and that whole tournament week last year.”
Photo: Raj Mehta
Talk about bad luck. You get your first solo PGA Tour victory, you win a one-of-a-kind vehicle and before you can even park it in your driveway, it goes up in flames. Just like on the golf course, however, Griffin is remaining patient.
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“I drive courtesy cars basically for a living, which is also an incredible blessing on the PGA Tour to have that. But I’m not home very much and so it’s not a huge deal for me to win a car and not have access to it right now. Because I’m in the middle of a season and I’m not home a crazy amount where I would really enjoy it as much as I would want to… It will be really cool to have that car eventually and I know it’s going to be perfect when I do because they’re working really hard to make it up.”
Wise words from the 30-year-old, who, despite the chaos surrounding the car, has already picked out the perfect name for it.
“I’ll probably name the car Ashley and call her Ash. That’s what me and my wife decided. But, no, it’s been an interesting ride, pun intended.”
