Tag: hole-in-one

This LPGA player made her third ace of the season, co-leads at The Annika

Jiwon Jeon got to see it this time.

BELLEAIR, Fla. – Jiwon Jeon got to see it this time. In her first two aces of the season, she wasn’t able to watch the ball go into the hole. But the third time around, she was pretty sure she saw her ball drop from the tee on the par-3 third hole at Pelican Golf Club.

Maybe.

“So I was like, this one today I actually saw it going into the hole, but I wasn’t sure because it was pretty far, like 180 yards off the tee,” she said. “So I see some people raise their hands and I’m like, oh, is it actually going in or not?”

South Korea’s Jeon, 27, gave herself a five out of 10 on the celebration, noting that she did high-five everyone.

The ace helped vault Jeon to a share of first with Charley Hull at the 2024 The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican after a round of 6-under 64.

Jeon used a 5-hybrid for today’s ace at Pelican. Last month, she made an ace at the Buick LPGA Shanghai with a 5-iron. Her first hole-in-one of 2024 came in Portland with a well-struck 8-iron.

She becomes the first player since Danielle Kang in 2014 to make three aces in one season and the fourth overall.

Two years ago, Jeon made her first hole-in-one in a non-competition round.

With Thursday’s ace, CME Group will donate $20,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research. A total of $580,000 has gone to St. Jude this year, with $60,000 of it coming from Jeon’s fine play.

“Obviously I’m just inside top 100 right now, “ said Jeon, who sits 98th on the CME points list, “and then obviously I want to keep my card for next year, but I try not to think about it too much. I literally gave everything for last three days practice. I’m trying to figure out what I have to do out here and then really focus on like each shot.”

The top 100 players on the CME points list keep their cards.

Watch this Massachusetts high school golfer finish his career off the perfect way — with a hole-in-one

It was Senior Day and parents had surrounded the hole to greet the players as they finished their round.

Standing on the ninth hole at the Marshfield Country Club about to hit his final tee shot as a member of the Marshfield High golf team in Massachusetts, Owen McCall looked at the green and was a little worried. It was Senior Day (Oct. 9) and parents had surrounded the hole to greet the players as they finished their round.

He didn’t need to worry as the tee shot ended up exactly where he wanted.

Right in the cup for a hole-in-one.

“I wanted to make sure I didn’t go long because that’s where everyone was standing,” remembered McCall. “I was rethinking about using my nine iron at the last minute after seeing the person in front of me hit an eight iron, but I went with the nine. When I hit it I thought it might be a little thin and I remember saying ‘Get legs!’

“I couldn’t see the pin from where I was standing, but I heard it hit the green and then there was no noise for a second. Then I heard everyone yelling and screaming from down near the hole. I had kind of a delayed reaction because I couldn’t believe it went in the hole,” said McCall, who then immediately ran down to see for himself what had happened.

“It’s still hard to believe that I hit my first hole-in-one on my final high school shot. It’s a storybook ending.”

Making this even more of an unbelievable finish is there is actual video proof of it. McCall is a member of the Marshfield Student Broadcasting team and they were at the course getting video from the match against Hanover. They happened to be in the right place to catch the dramatic shot.

“It hit about five feet left of the hole and rolled straight in,” said Marshfield head coach Matt Murphy. “It was amazing to see. I saw a kid from Brockton High do it on the same hole about a decade ago.”

McCall is a four-year member of the golf team, the last two on the varsity squad.

“Owen was a great captain for us this year and just a really nice kid,” Murphy said. “He was great at bringing everyone together on the team.”

McCall was an alternate Wednesday as the Marshfield High golf team competed in the Division 1 South Sectional Tournament at Acushnet River Valley. The Rams placed sixth as a team with senior JD Ambrose leading the way with a 78, which was six over par.

“We did OK as a team. It was a windy day on the course so we had to contend with that,” said Murphy. “It’s not an easy course to play by any means.”

Justin Ford had an 82 for the round and fellow junior Gavin McDonough carded an 83. Junior Ben Berian finished with an 86, senior Max Albert had a 95 and junior Will Noyes shot a 97. Xaverian Brothers won the overall team championship.

“We had a great season,” said Murphy as the Rams finished with a match record of 12-4. “I’ll miss the seniors who are leaving the program, but I feel good about the talent we have coming back for next year.”

Email the reporter at dwolcott@wickedlocal.com and you can follow him on Twitter, @DavidWolcott1.

Course architect Jay Blasi makes hole-in-one on par 4 at Sand Valley’s Mammoth Dunes

Forget about an ace on a par 3. Blasi did one better.

Most golfers dream of scoring a hole-in-one on any par 3. Golf course designer Jay Blasi did one better.

Blasi, who serves on Golfweek’s Best architectural advisory panel and often hosts course-rating events, used driver to ace the short, downhill par-4 14th of Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley Resort in Wisconsin.

The hole tips out at 325 yards. Blasi was playing the orange tees as he led a group of Golfweek’s Best raters around the David McLay Kidd-designed layout. He said it was playing 272 on a direct line at the flag. As seen in the video below, it took a few seconds to register. (Warning: Some language is as might be expected for such a surprise, and might be NSFW.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/C_2yPIvuzF6/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

“On a par 3, anytime you hit one towards the hole you have a sliver of hope it will go in,” Blasi told Golfweek. “On a drivable par 4, the hole becomes the green itself and you feel like you accomplished your goal if you knock it on. In this case it landed on the green in line with the flag, rolled at the hole and disappeared. The feeling was more shock and awe than pure joy for me. But for the group it was just bliss.”

Blasi didn’t immediately share details via text about what his bar tab might have been after buying a round for the house to celebrate, but the Golfweek’s Best raters can be a thirsty bunch with high standards.

The hole curves sharply downhill with a feeder slope coming in from the right on a typically firm fairway, allowing players to send the ball out wide of multiple centerline bunkers and still feed it onto the green. It’s not exactly a monster so long as players miss the sand, but still, a hole-in-one? Pretty cool and totally unforgettable for Blasi on a course that ranks No. 3 among all public-access layouts in the state and is No. 36 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of all modern courses in the U.S.

No. 14 of Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin (Brandon Carter/Sand Valley)

The Wisconsin-raised, California-based Blasi sports a 2.9 handicap index and previously had made four holes-in-one on par 3s at a strong lineup of courses: The Patriot in Oklahoma (after having helped design the course, he made the first ace on opening day), Stanford Golf Course in California, Pasatiempo in California and Omni PGA Frisco’s short course named the Swing (of course we count them on par-3 courses!) in Texas.

The latest ace comes on the heels of Blasi complaining to this writer about the state of his game. Might that have anything to do with the fact we’re opposing captains in the Ryder Cup-style, Golfweek’s Best rater-based Scratch Cup in October? After the hole-in-one, this writer and his team are accepting thoughts and prayers.

Did Barstool’s Riggs make a hole-in-one at Bandon Dunes? And what’s the rule on a ball being lodged against the flagstick?

Riggs set Twitter ablaze when he inferred that he’d made an ace at the famous Oregon resort.

Barstool Sports’ Sam “Riggs” Bozoian missed this week’s edition of the Fore Play podcast because he was off playing Bandon Dunes.

So although he wasn’t part of the twice-weekly podcast, he lit the Twitterverse (X-verse?) ablaze on Friday when he posted that he’d just made an ace at the famous Oregon resort that houses five of the top 14 courses on the Golfweek’s Best top 100 U.S. public-access layouts list.

Via social media, Riggs said he was buying drinks for those on hand at Bandon Dunes after he posted this photo, which infers that he made an ace:

It’s tough to see in the photo if any part of the ball is below the lip of the hole. But if it’s not, rule 13.2c of the USGA Rules and Interpretations explains this scenario in detail.

13.2c. Ball Resting Against Flagstick in Hole

If your ball comes to rest against the flagstick left in the hole, and any part of your ball is in the hole below the surface of the putting green, your ball is treated as holed.

If no part of your ball is in the hole below the surface of the putting green:

Your ball is not holed and must be played as it lies.

If the flagstick is removed and your ball moves (whether it falls into the hole or moves away from the hole), there is no penalty and it must be replaced on the lip of the hole.

According to the National Hole-In-One Association, a tee shot hit by an amateur golfer on a par 3 goes into the hole one out of every 12,750 times.

Married pair each ace the same hole in the same round on the same day

You’ve read about all kinds of hole-in-one stories. This might be a new one.

You’ve read about all kinds of hole-in-one stories. This might be a new one: a married couple each aced the same hole in the same round.

Yea, it happened. Ann and Bill Gray were playing Capital Canyon Club in Prescott, Arizona, on July 10 when they got to the 16th hole during their afternoon round. That’s where the magic happened.

With two more golfers in their foursome as witnesses, the Grays celebrated their round in the best way possible, as each of them made an ace.

Capital Canyon Club is a private Tom Weiskopf design which has become kinda famous for producing aces.

The crew at Breaking Par featured the course a while back after ace after ace was recorded at the layout.

 

This Monday qualifier made a par-4 ace Saturday at Korn Ferry Tour’s The Ascendant

It marks the Korn Ferry Tour’s first par-4 ace since 2012 and fifth overall.

A hole-in-one is one of the greatest shots in golf. A hole-in-one on a par 4? Even better.

That’s what Timmy Crawford did Saturday. He Monday qualified into this week’s Korn Ferry Tour event, The Ascendant at TPC Colorado. Come Saturday morning after making the cut, he hit the best shot of his life.

Crawford hit driver on the 365-yard par 4 over water and onto the green before the ball went in the cup, giving him an ace.

The hole measures 365 yards on the scorecard and is played across a large pond. Saturday’s direct line tee-to-hole measured 336 yards. It marks the Korn Ferry Tour’s first par-4 ace since 2012 and fifth overall.

This week is Crawford’s PGA Tour-sanctioned debut, and now he has a memory forever. He recently finished his college career at Illinois after four years at Loyola-Chicago.

There has been just one par-4 ace on the PGA Tour, recorded by Andrew Magee in the first round of the 2001 WM Phoenix Open (No. 17 at TPC Scottsdale). Last year, Davis Shore made a par-4 ace on PGA Tour Canada, coming at Ambassador Golf Club’s par-4 15th during the second round of the Windsor Championship.

This former Winged Foot pro just made back-to-back holes-in-one at the U.S. Senior Open

As if making an ace in a major tournament isn’t enough of a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, he did it twice.

As if making an ace in a major tournament isn’t enough of a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, a club pro who splits time between Florida and the Northeast decided to do it twice in the span of two holes.

Incredibly, Frank Bensel Jr., a club pro based in Jupiter, Florida, stepped to the 184-yard No. 4 at Newport Country Club and made a hole-in-one. Then the former Winged Foot pro, who has split time between Century Country Club outside of New York City and the Country Club of Mirasol in West Palm Beach, Florida, did something truly amazing.

The 56-year-old Bensel, who played collegiately at Maryland, walked up to the 203-yard No. 5 and did it again.

The National Hole-In-One Registry calculates the odds of making two aces in one round as 67-million-to-1. There are no odds available for back-to-back aces, perhaps because few people have considered it, but mainly because most courses don’t have back-to-back par 3s. 

It’s the first there’s ever been back-to-back aces in a Tour-sanctioned event.

Bensel, who shot 75 on Thursday in the opening round, followed with four straight bogeys. His previous major start was at the 2021 PGA Championship, where he finished 21 over after an opening 86.

But Bensel now has a story that is truly one for the ages.

U.S. Open 2024: Watch Francesco Molinari make an ace on his last hole to make the cut

Sepp Straka already had an ace on the ninth hole Friday but Molinari one-upped him.

Sepp Straka had a hole-in-one on the par-3 ninth hole at Pinehurst No. 2 on Friday and that was no doubt cool to see.

But Franceso Molinari one-upped him late in the day.

Playing the back nine first, Molinari stood on the tee box on the ninth hole, which was playing 194 yards, at 7 over. That had him two shots off the projected cutline.

One swing later, and Molinari booked himself a couple of weekend tee times at the 124th U.S. Open.

It was quite a sight, as Molinari hit a high cut left, his ball just barely reaching the green. But then, it started on its path toward the hole and found nothing but jar.

It’s the second ace of the week and the fourth one at No. 9 in U.S. Open history.

His playing partners Sergio Garcia and and Ryo Ishikawa were enjoying the moment, too.

“Yes, we saw it go in. I think from where we were standing, it looked like it just carried the bunker, plus the greens are getting firm, so it was the ideal shot,” Molinari said. “Then it started tracking, was going to break left to right at the hole, and we were joking with Serg and how it looked and on a great line the whole way, but what are the chances really. I don’t even know what to say. Just incredible.”

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Having just bogeyed the eighth hole, Molinari’s ace came at the most opportune time.

Peter Jacobsen (2005) and Zach Johnson (2014) also aced the ninth during a U.S. Open. In fact, the ninth the only hole at Pinehurst No. 2 that has surrended an ace during the U.S. Open.

Former Georgia golfer Sepp Straka hits hole-in-one at the U.S. Open

Former Georgia golf standout Sepp Straka notched his first career PGA Tour hole-in-one at the U.S. Open

Former Georgia Bulldogs golfer Sepp Straka scored his first career hole-in-one on the PGA Tour. Straka hit a hole-in-one on the difficult Pinehurst No. 2 course during the U.S. Open.

Straka nailed his hole-in-one during the second round of the U.S. Open on hole No. 9, which is a 194-yard par 3. Straka’s hole-in-one moved him to plus-2 overall. He followed up his hole-in-one with a birdie to get to plus-1. Straka is one of eight former Georgia golfers participating in the U.S. Open, which is the most of any college.

Here’s a look at Straka’s amazing ace, which should help him make the cut:

Golfweek wrote about an unfortunate shot Sepp Straka had earlier in the round.

“Straka was the recipient of the worst kind of bounce early in the round. His approach shot on No. 3 was good … too good,” said Jason Lusk. “It doinked off the flagstick and rebounded backward into a greenside bunker. From there Straka butchered his recovery, sending his bunker shot over the green and eventually making triple-bogey 7. Among the toughest of tough breaks.”

Straka’s hole-in-one helps him make up some of the ground he lost on hole No. 3.

U.S. Open 2024: Watch Sepp Straka make an ace at Pinehurst No. 2

Sepp Straka gets lesson in yin and yang of golf at Pinehurst.

The golfing gods taketh away, and the golfing gods giveth. Just ask Sepp Straka after his hole-in-one on No. 9 in Friday’s second round of the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.

Straka was the recipient of the worst kind of bounce early in the round. His approach shot on No. 3 was good … too good. It doinked off the flagstick and rebounded backward into a greenside bunker. From there Straka butchered his recovery, sending his bunker shot over the green and eventually making triple-bogey 7. Among the toughest of tough breaks.

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He faced no such bad bounce on No. 9. The two-time PGA Tour winner’s approach to the 194-yard par 3 bounced perfectly on the line and rolled into the cup just like a putt for the ace. It was the first hole-in-one at this year’s U.S. Open and the third in the Opens held at Pinehurst, along with Peter Jacobsen (2005) and Zach Johnson (2014). All three aces have come on the ninth hole.

“Yea, 7-iron. Perfect number for me,” he said. “Tried to land at 185. It was a really good swing. Middle of the face, went right at it. Fortunately rolled out and went in the hole.”

Playing with good friend J.T. Poston made it even more special.

“Had one of my best friends playing with me today, J.T. He was there for my ace at Augusta during the Par 3, as well. Our celebration this time was a little bit better.”

Straka opened with an even-par 70 in the first round. The triple bogey had knocked him back substantially, but the ace got the Austrian back to 2 over for the week.

Late in the day, Francesco Molinari would ace the ninth as well to become the fourth hole-in-one there in U.S. Open history.