Eric Jones won first place, and got the girl.
At the World Long Drive Championship in Mesquite, Nev., this fall, Jones crushed a tee shot 381 yards, 33 inches to win the senior division and $23,000. Then, with ESPN cameras rolling, he dropped to a knee and proposed to his girlfriend, Maureen McInaney, who was watching from the stands. She said yes.
Jones, ’80, who played golf at Stanford, had six shots in the competition and nailed his winning drive on his final try, outdistancing the second-place finisher by 29 inches. Moments later, he astonished the crowd of 4,000—and McInaney—with his very public marriage proposal. “It was an unbelieveably magic moment,” Jones, of Orinda, Calif., told the Contra Costa Times. “You could not have scripted a better moment.”
