MEET THE FOUNDERS: The Random and Improbable Origin of Gino Hefner and Jeremy McDonald
ALTOONA, Pa. — Every empire has an origin story. The Random Cup's begins, fittingly, with a man who was simply out of options.
Fourteen years ago, Random Cup Co-Founder Gino Hefner needed a fourth player for an out-of-town golf weekend. Names were running short. One was suggested — an attorney named Jeremy McDonald, whom Hefner had never met. Hefner harbored, by his own admission, reservations. "I had my hesitations about bringing a lawyer," he is said to have thought at the time, silently, and with prejudice. Out of ideas and out of time, he extended the invitation anyway.
It remains the finest decision either man has made.
The weekend that followed is now the stuff of Random legend. The pairing won the tournament. A lifelong brotherhood was forged. And an idea — reckless, unnecessary, and destined for greatness — was born in the nether regions of Altoona, Pennsylvania. There is a great deal more to the origination story, but the Committee regrets that those details are available only to those who attend the Cup, or who purchase the New York Times Best Selling Memoirs of a Random, now in its fourth printing.
What began as one fateful outing has, over many years of degenerate activity and golf, culminated in the greatest single sporting event known to man. Every year, twelve of the finest degenerate golfers, gamblers, and drinkers the Mid-Atlantic has ever produced gather on hallowed grounds to contest the most sought-after trophy in all of sport — a trophy molded by an all-star team of the finest Italian craftsmen, commissioned by the Co-Founders themselves, and flown around the world for appearances at the globe's most exclusive courses.
The trophy's standing is, at this point, beyond dispute. The Random Cup's legal team — a division founded, it should be noted, by one of the two men in this story — recently concluded a costly two-year litigation against the NHL, which had proposed retiring the dilapidated Stanley Cup in favor of a Random Cup knockoff. The suit was successful. Separately, the Committee has graciously permitted the WGC-HSBC to borrow certain Random Cup stylings, and now regards that event as a feeder tournament whose champion may, pending Committee approval, be considered for entry into the Random Cup. Approval is considered doubtful.
The two founders remain, to this day, the institution's beating heart — Hefner the steady hand, McDonald the outgoing one, together a duo the Cup was quite literally built around. But brotherhood, at the Random Cup, has never meant mercy.
Because here is where the story could go: both men enter Random Cup XIV as three-time champions. Both are chasing an unprecedented fourth jacket — a feat no player in Championship history has ever achieved. And should the draw, the week, and the golf gods conspire as every Random storyteller secretly hopes they will, the two founders — the lawyer and the man who almost didn't call him — could arrive at the final round on hallowed ground, level, playing head-to-head, with history itself on the line.
Fourteen years ago, one of them needed a fourth. On Sunday, they may need to beat each other to become the first.
The brotherhood built the Cup. The Cup, it seems, was always going to ask them to settle it.
Memoirs of a Random is available wherever fine literature is exaggerated.