Ace in the Hole: Golf Both Personal and Professional for Moyer

Written by Doug Goodnough

For most of his life, Mark Moyer, ’73, has had a personal and professional relationship with the game of golf.

He was a member of the Hillsdale College men’s golf team, and after graduation, worked in media sales for Golf Digest magazine for 15 years. For more than a decade, he also was the high school girls’ golf coach at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Metro Detroit, where he was named the Michigan Division III Coach of Year in 2015. During his coaching tenure, his teams won seven regional championships and finished state runners-up three times.

Now retired from coaching as well as his career in advertising and media, Moyer continues his 60-plus-year “lifelong passion.” Playing about 100 rounds of golf per year, he hopes to add to his remarkable tally of six career holes-in-one. Although none of those aces occurred as a Charger, he loved his time on the team.

“I probably played in the majority of the events,” said Moyer, a Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, native. “I was probably the fifth or sixth man, and we played six. We didn’t have a league meet, and we played an independent schedule.”

The head coach at the time was Bill Hodges, who also served as the men’s basketball head coach and an assistant football coach at Hillsdale. As a member of the NAIA, Hillsdale had to play wherever it could find an opponent.

“We took six [golfers], and we couldn’t all sit in the van, so Coach Hodges would drive his big Oldsmobile 98,” Moyer said of the travel arrangements. “The seniors would typically ride in the van, and the freshmen and sophomores would go with Coach Hodges. If we won and were driving by a nice restaurant like [Win] Schuler’s, he would take us out to a nice dinner. And if he wasn’t happy with us, maybe McDonald’s. But I loved the sport and enjoyed being part of the team.”

Moyer was also very active in other areas of campus. Besides his academic responsibilities, he served as sports editor for The Collegian and also was a student assistant sports information director. Elected senior class president, Moyer said his involvement with the Dow Center’s Leadership Workshop was a memorable experience. As the student chair of the workshop, his role was recruiting guest speakers and organizing student involvement.

“I was sending letters, making calls to get some speakers to come in,” he said. “I had the marketing director of General Motors and the president of a Michigan bank come to campus.”

His other primary task was finding students to meet with these business leaders for workshop sessions, which often involved an exchange of ideas and provided potential networking opportunities for students.

“Hillsdale really was instrumental for growth, just interacting with and getting involved with people, be it classmates or businesspeople,” Moyer said. “It was really good preparation for going out in the business world.”

Moyer has been actively involved in three golf clubs throughout his playing career. As a member of the Oakland Hills Golf Club, he served as golf chair and was a volunteer at the course during the 2004 Ryder Cup. He was president of the Stonycroft Hills Club in 2014 and is currently a member of a club in South Carolina, where he and his wife of 46 years, Martha, winter. They have two grown children and one granddaughter.

If you ask him about his six holes-in-one, Moyer remembers the details of each one.

“I had a hole-in-one in a tournament at Oakland Hills in 1994,” he said of his first.

The year 2022 was a banner one for Moyer, recording three holes-in-one. Two were on the same hole 18 days apart.

“Then in the fall, I had a hole-in-one the day before Thanksgiving with my wife, son, and daughter-in-law,” he said. “That was kind of special.”

Reflecting on his college days, he said he considered transferring from Hillsdale to a larger university until former economics faculty member Dr. John Sparks convinced him to stay.

“We talked, and he helped me see some of the benefits [of staying at Hillsdale],” Moyer said. “And I’m glad I stayed, because of the workshop and all those other things that helped me grow. It was a really great experience for me.”

Doug Goodnough, '90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.

Published in June 2026

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