Remodeling? need a Plumber.Look no further.
Remodeling? need a Plumber.Look no further.
Nine-year-old Randi Wilson of Seaforth, Ont., performed a golfing miracle on the weekend. Here's what Randi did: She got a hole-in-one on the first swing on the first shot she ever made on a golf course.
You heard right. Randi had never played before, then teed up a five-iron on the 103-yard 10th hole at the Seaforth Golf and Country Club, on Saturday and merely aced it.
Club pro Cam Doig started Randi and her 11-year old cousin Matt Carnochan off on the 10th tee because the first tee was busy. Matt's mother witnessed the ace and came running back to the pro shop, saying "You won't believe what just happened."
But Randi was nonchalant, perhaps because she figured the object of the game was to get the ball in the hole, wasn't it? She completed nine holes and went home.
"The first hole was great, but the rest of it sucked," Randi said.
"Great" could be an understatement. This was more than great. This was memorable, a gold-medal stroke for a golfing child.
"She should quit the game right now," Nick Price, two-time PGA Championship winner said while on the phone about other matters. Price, like everybody who learned about Randi's accomplishment, had a hearty chuckle about the unusual feat.
It is hard to say just how rare the ace really is. Lori Hains runs Golf Digest's clearing house for holes-in-one and had no record of a youngster, or anybody for that matter, making an ace on his or her first swing. That does not mean it has not happened, simply that Golf Digest has no record of it since it started the clearing house in 1952.
Golf Monthly in the United Kingdom also collects stories of uncommon aces. Steve Muncey, at the magazine, is the collector, and was taken with Randi's sweet shot that went right into the hole.
"I've never heard of anybody going on to the course for the first time and doing that," Muncey said from his office in London.
The National Hole-in-One Association in Dallas could not be sure as to whether Randi's ace was the first of its kind. A representative said the organization does not keep records of unusual aces, although the woman said: "We are fixing to do that."
But her reaction to the story was telling. At first, she did not grasp that this was a tale of a youngster who had made an ace the first time she hit a shot. She thought she was just hearing another story about a kid who got a hole-in-one and wanted a certificate for the "one" on her scorecard.
"Oh, my gosh, you mean she got the hole-in-one the first time she swung a club?" the woman asked when she got the drift of the conversation. There was no mistaking her shock.
Now, a hole-in-one is certainly a "perfect fluke," to cite the term that six-time British Open champion Harry Vardon used years ago. But there is also something nearly myth-making about an ace; this is especially so when a child hitting a ball for the first time makes the hole-in-one.
Picture the setting: A 9-year-old girl shows up at a course without clubs and gets a rental set. She swings a three-wood a couple of times on the tee, but her cousin, a club member and obviously a wise young man, counsels her to use a five-iron. The hole on the regulation course is downhill, and so she probably feels that she can at least get the ball in the air. She does so nicely, then watches as the ball lands short of the tiny green and bounces forward on its happy journey.
Her aunt is already saying "good shot" and then suddenly the ball disappears into the hole. Cousin Matt starts screaming.
The Seaforth club itself plays a part in the story. After all, most fancy big-city courses have rules about Saturday morning play for juniors. But Seaforth encourages kids. As Doig said, "They're golfers. We treat them the same as anybody else."
Maybe she wasn't aiming for the hole. Nah, couldn't be, even though a famous golfer sometimes played that way.
"I might have made more (aces) if I'd shot at the flag more often," Ben Hogan once said. "Usually, I aimed to portions of the green that gave me the best putt."
But what the heck, golf is more fun without having to putt. Randi will realize this if she keeps golfing.
And one day, having struggled to get on the greens, let alone make an ace, she will look back fondly at a soft summer Saturday morning in August, 1996, and think, "Wow, wasn't that something?"
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