HOMETOWN

Given that I played my first shots on patchy grass in our yard to empty soup cans sunken in the ground, I’ve gone on to have a full golf life. I’ve played thousands of rounds, chronicled hundreds of tournaments with a keyboard or a camera, and been privileged to spend time with dozens of golfers who shaped the sport.

But there is a gap in my golf history. I haven’t made a hole-in-one.

Of course, more talented folks play longer than I have without making an ace. The odds are against anyone: 12,500 to 1 for an average golfer, and even 2,500 to 1 for a tour pro. Those kinds of chances remind me of the “Greyhound Derby” contest at the Colonial grocery store when I was kid. Every Saturday night that we watched the races on television, our dog looked like a lock for the $1,000 winner’s prize . . . until fading like a cur in the homestretch.

An ace has been the mechanical rabbit that I can’t catch.

About the same time the dogs were disappointing us, I was becoming obsessed with the Guinness World Records book that I received one Christmas. It was chock-full of the biggest or tallest you name it. As a budding golfer, I was fascinated by the entry for longest hole-in-one: 444 yards by Robert Mitera, Oct. 7, 1965, on the 10th hole of the appropriately named Miracle Hill Golf Course in Omaha, Nebraska.

I’ve seen holes-in-one in the flesh. Two flew straight in, another rolled in like a Ben Crenshaw putt, and a fourth took a fluky hard-right bounce off a greenside mound. A scorecard, as the saying goes, doesn’t have pictures. That said, a good friend of mine is loath to claim one of his 1s, a skulled short iron that was an ugly shot by any measure until the ball skittered into the cup.

No doubt the most memorable that I’ve witnessed occurred nearly 40 years ago at a par-3 course in New Jersey. I was playing with my pal Michael Dann, with whom I’d enjoyed many games when we lived in the Sandhills. He usually beat me in those days, and I was motivated to change that when we convened at the short course on a busy Saturday afternoon. The first tee was bustling, and we had a de facto gallery when it was our turn on the 80-yard opener. I went first, snuggling a wedge only a foot from the flagstick, and crowed about it to Michael. It was going to be my day.

Then he flew his shot into the cup.

I came close as a teenager. I one-hopped an 8-iron off the pin on the first hole at Knollwood. I hit a 4-wood to 6 inches on the formidable 13th at Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club. Although I’ve had a couple of hole-outs from the fairway from a hundred yards or so, since giving Michael something to shoot at that day in New Jersey, the closest I’ve come on a par-3 tee shot is about a yardstick away.

Perhaps I’m thinking about aces because there have been some notable ones made starting last summer.

I was working on the TV production of the 2024 U.S. Senior Open when Frank Bensel Jr. made a hole-in-one on the par-3 fourth hole at Newport (R.I.) Country Club with a 6-iron. Newport is the rare layout with back-to-back par-3s. Bensel used the same club to ace the fifth hole. It was only the second time in 1,001 USGA championships that someone made two aces in a round. The only other case of consecutive holes-in-one is thought to be by John Hudson in a 1971 tournament on the British PGA circuit.

Last fall, Bryson DeChambeau went viral by trying to make an ace hitting a wedge over his house. On his 16th day of attempts, the U.S. Open champion at Pinehurst succeeded. This February at the South African Open, Dale Whitnell became the second man to make a pair of holes-in-one in one round on the DP World Tour. Three golfers have achieved the 67 million-to-1 feat on the PGA Tour, most recently Brian Harman in 2015.

I am not greedy. One would be plenty. I checked in with my friend Mike Fields of Southern Pines, a golfer good enough in his mid-60s to have shot his age twice within a week. He didn’t make his first of three aces until he was 57. I shall keep swinging.