In the midst of a crippling pandemic and saddled with a major rebuilding project at home, a Wisconsin couple found a few minutes of sweet escape with the rarest of golf feats.
Thanks to two perfectly-struck 7-irons, the husband and wife of Steve Howe and Carolyn Barnett-Howe from Appleton made back-to-back holes-in-one on the 158-yard sixth hole on the Dye Course at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie.
“It was amazing. Quite amazing,” Steve said, via phone from Florida.
Added Carolyn: “We’ve done a lot of things in golf, and that one was surreal. It was just plain, old fun.”
Steve, 69, and Carolyn, 57, were playing in the club’s weekly PGA member best-ball event with four other threesomes. When their group arrived at the sixth hole, Steve was first on the tee.
“His (tee shot) was just beautiful,” Carolyn said. “I started going ‘go in’ because it was on the pin the whole way. And then sure enough – I have very good eyesight – and I’m like, ‘That dropped. I saw it drop.’ ”
With COVID-19 safety guidelines to keep golfers from touching flagsticks, there were Styrofoam collars inside the hole which made it hard for the Howes to know if Steve’s shot actually went in the hole.
“You’re always not really sure because you can see the top half of the ball, but I’m like, ‘I saw that go down, Steve. I’m very sure you just made an ace.’ So we celebrated,” Carolyn said.
“In midair, he’s like, ‘Holy cow! Boy, does that look good.’ And it just landed perfectly and trickled and boom. He’s like, ‘You made it, too.’ We celebrated, but I’m thinking we’re going to get up there and mine’s going to be 6 inches behind the hole,” Carolyn said. “But when we got up there, they were just stuck together right in the hole.”
The Howes are in a hole-in-one club at PGA Golf Club, so their aces netted each of them a nice prize of $525. It was the 10th hole-in-one for Steve and the fifth for Carolyn.
“We would have thrown a real nice party afterward, but the clubhouse is closed for the coronavirus social distancing, so we couldn’t do that,” Steve said. “But when everything gets back to normal, we’ll put on a little bit of a party for everybody.”
Carolyn said the couple are “purists,” so they only count holes-in-one that come during a round. But both have had their own aces or witnessed others, sometimes with interesting circumstances.
Like the time years ago when Carolyn was working as an apprentice at Ridgeway Country Club in Neenah after college and was hitting shots during a Rotary Club outing hit-the-green contest. She was having trouble keeping her ball on the green on a windy day when Steve walked over.
“He walks out in tassled penny loafers. He asks for a ball. He tees it up. He puts one swing on it. It takes two hops, goes in the hole,” Carolyn said. “He looks at me and he says, ‘It’s really not that hard a shot.’ And he walked back into the clubhouse. I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ ”
Or the time when Carolyn and Steve were playing against some college kids. Steve hit his tee shot left of the hole and thinking it was out of bounds, he played a provisional. He calmly knocked that tee shot into the hole. When they got up to the green, they found his original tee shot under a pine tree and the boys made him play that ball.
“He knocks that on the green 30 feet away and he makes the putt for 3,” Carolyn said.
There was also a time when Steve was the pro at Ridgeway when, during a pro-am, two players made back-to-back holes-in-one.
“That was a story because the first person got whatever prize there was, and the second person got nothing,” Carolyn said with a laugh.
Carolyn and Steve, who own Swing Solutions in Appleton, had just finished an eight-week program for 100 high school golfers in Wisconsin before heading to Florida just before the pandemic started spreading and non-essential businesses were being closed.
Not getting to see those players and others compete after the WIAA canceled the spring sports season has been difficult.
“I think my empathetic system just kind of feels for those kids who lost their spring golf season, and all the kids who lost their spring sports. It’s important to them. In teen world, that’s as important as our jobs are to us,” Carolyn said. “So that was sad, especially for those seniors.”
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Carolyn will be heading back to Appleton in a couple of weeks. The couple’s home sustained heavy water damage this winter when a frozen pipe burst, and Steve said she wants to be home to pick out some of the new furnishings. He plans to stay in Florida a little longer before returning home.
With their home repairs and the golf season still somewhat in flux, the Howes at least have a fantastic memory from their time in Florida.
“It was something we’ve never experienced,” Carolyn said. “I’ll tell you what, that was a rush. It was really fun.”
Mike Sherry is a staffer for the Appleton Post-Crescent, part of the USA Today Network. Email him at msherry@postcrescent.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikeSherry14.