Viola Baker was playing golf in one of her regular groups late last month at Elkhorn Golf Club.
On the 13th hole, Baker hit her tee shot from 80 yards with a 7-wood over the water onto the grass. The ball rolled onto the green and into the cup. It was the first hole-in-one for the 84-year-old Stockton, California, native.
“It took me about 32 years of playing to get one,” she said. “It was a thrill.”
Not to be outdone, Joyce Belt, who plays with Baker in the Elkhorn Women’s 18 Hole Golf Association, made a hole-in-one two days later on July 28. Belt, 76, aced Elkhorn’s 16th hole from 134 yards with a driver.
“That was my first hole-in-one,” Belt said. “And it probably will be the only one.”
Coincidentally, Baker and Belt were in the same foursome when Belt made her hole-in-one. But Baker didn’t see it because she was finishing on the 15th green with Maryann Levitt. Margie Baldwin was on the tee with Belt and witnessed the ace.
“When it came off the clubhead, it looked pretty good,” Belt said. “We were watching it and watching it and we didn’t see the ball until we got on the green and could see it was in the hole. That’s when we got excited.”
Belt and her husband, Keith, moved to Stockton in 2000 from the Bay Area to be closer to their children and their families. Joyce Belt is a retired office manager and Keith Belt is a retired operating engineer.
Baker plays regularly with her husband, Jay, who carded his only ace about nine years ago on No. 8 at Brookside County Club in Stockton; the Elkhorn Women’s 18 Hole Golf Association, which plays tournaments on Tuesdays and casual rounds on Thursdays and Saturdays; and with a group of eight to 10 couples and some singles that calls itself the “church group” on Sundays. She made her hole-in-one while playing with the “church group.”
Viola Baker worked for Tillie Lewis, a successful entrepreneur and leader in the mid-20th century food packing industry in Stockton. Baker said she took dictation from Lewis during her time at Tillie Lewis’s cannery, though she worked much of her career as an office manager for San Joaquin County and continues to work part-time for WorkNet in the county’s economic development department.
[lawrence-related id=778057667,778057495,778056021,778050562]