Brisbane battler Mark Duncan crowned Holey Moley Australia champion

A Brisbane battler and underdog, who says his family lives week to week, has won a life-changing $100,000 prize in the finale of Holey Moley.

Queensland battler Mark Duncan has been crowned Australia’s first Holey Moley champion in an underdog victory he says will save his family.

In the finale of Channel 7’s extreme putt putt competition on Monday night, the 48-year-old from Redland City, where the show was also filmed, beat pro golfer Montana Strauss and drone pilot Jayden Lawson on Greg Norman’s final hole to win the $100,000 prize.

Duncan, who cleans and recycles waste at Australia Post in Darra, in Brisbane’s southwest, said it would alleviate a lifetime of financial stress for him and his wife Karen, who has worked in administration at TAFE Queensland for 25 years.

Incredible behind-the-scenes of Holey Moley filming

Redland City’s Mark Duncan wins Holey Moley Australia. Picture: Paul A. Broben

“I’ve got goose bumps,” Duncan said. “I was looking at myself as being the underdog.

“I still have it in my memory bank – when I dream about it I can see the ball go in. We went ballistic.”

“It has saved us winning the $100,000. We are workers. We just get by. It’s been tough in life. This is going to set us up and make life easier down the track so we aren’t living week to week.”

Duncan plans to use the prize money to buy his first ever new car, a four-wheel drive he can take camping with his two adult sons.

He first began playing golf with his father when he was four and they entered competitions together at Wynnum Golf Club, before he later introduced his sons to golfing.

Friends sent him the link to the Holey Moley auditions and he was due to compete in Los Angeles before the show was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic last March and subsequently moved to a site in Redlands, three minutes from his home, in October.

“It ended up like fate. It landed on my doorstep,” he said.

Duncan watched the episode on Monday night with fellow contestants at the Alexandra Hills Hotel, where he and Karen met 25 years ago.

“Watching it I just relived it. I was jumping out my chair … throwing the fist down like Brett Lee,” he said.

Channel 7 will premiere a new Celebrity Holey Moley next Sunday.