When I was 16, I had my first – and only – hole in one, a 127-yard shot on the golf course where I learned to play in New Jersey. From the elevated tee, I tracked it all the way into the hole. Until yesterday, it was the golfing thrill of my life.
As a 73-year-old, such golfing thrills are fewer and farther between. A few years ago, at my favorite course in Connecticut, Hartford’s Keney Park, I struck perfectly a three-wood from the right rough on the longish par 4 9th hole and 217 yards later, it rolled into the cup on the front third of the green. At the time, my average three-wood distance was about 190 to 200 yards, but I caught a flyer and, well, it went a lot farther than any three-wood in the preceding two or three years – or since.
I intellectualized that an eagle from 217 yards out was far superior to a hole in one that was just a bit farther than half that distance. But emotionally I was tied to that hole in one, the first major thing I had ever done in golf and cause for a lot of whooping and hollering with my slightly older playing partner, who went on to dump a nine iron into a par four hole for his own eagle later that day. The town paper covered our exploits and, for about a week, I was cock of the walk with my friends.
So what happened yesterday? After a rather uneventful first nine at Pawleys Plantation Golf Club on the South Carolina coast, a water-logged scrambling bogey on the 10th and a misplayed short approach on the par 5 11th (another bogey), I pushed my drive into a the huge fairway-length bunker on the right side of the par 4 12th and had about 140 yards to a tightly placed pin in the back of the green – all carry over the greenside portion of the bunker and not much room behind the pin either. With a 15-mph wind into my face and blowing slightly from the right, I hit the purest long sand shot I have ever hit -- with a 5 hybrid. It took off on a high trajectory just a bit to the right of the pin, and with my aging eyesight, I lost it just before it began its descent. I was pleased that I hit it well enough to have a chance at staying on the green but was surprised when my playing partner – only three years younger than I but obviously with far superior eyesight – said, “I think that’s in.”
I was nonplussed. Although the wind was blowing slightly in a direction favorable to the line of my shot, there was just no way the ball could stop between the high lip of the bunker and the hole 20 feet beyond. When I drove my cart to greenside, there was no ball on the green, and my first look was over the green. Seeing nothing there, I circled to the windward side of the green and saw nothing there either. My playing partner yelled, quite emphatically from the bunker, “Look in the cup!” I know I grimaced and shrugged my shoulders but, as I strolled to the cup, I caught a glimpse of the top of my Callaway. There it was, propped up by one of those gizmos they have been using during the pandemic to provide no-touch removal of balls from the hole.
Behind the 12th green at Pawleys Plantation Golf Club, the first place I looked for my ball after a prodigious blast from the bunker 140 yards away. The pin was about 20 feet left of where it is in this older photo. The ball was in the cup.
Footnote: I birdied the next hole, a par 3, for my first-ever pair of deuces in two successive holes. But that sand shot, which felt so good right off the clubhead, has supplanted the memory of a five-foot birdie putt on the Road Hole at St. Andrew’s Old Course, a 217-yard eagle at my favorite muni course and, yes, even that hole in one just three years after I received my first proper short set of clubs.
Now, only shooting my age remains.