A golfer who hits a hole-in-one at the Heritage Oaks Golf & Country Club receives not only congratulatory handshakes from playing partners, but a plaque on one of the club walls.
The plaque contains the golfer’s name, the hole aced and its yardage, along with the date. But the back-to-back, holes-in-one recorded by Georges Lussier and David Brown really deserve plaques that stand out from the rest.
Perhaps one plaque, twice as large as the others, or even bigger. The odds of a golfer striking a hole-in-one are 12,500 to 1. The odds of pulling off what Lussier and Brown did last Thursday at a Florida State Golf Association (FSGA) one-day event are just a wee bit higher.
17,000,000 to 1.
“We were just amazed,” said Lussier, a 69-year-old retired mortgage banker and 36-year Sarasota resident, “and so were the two guys we were playing with, obviously.”
“It’s just unbelievable,” said Brown, a 61-year-old St. Petersburg resident, realtor, and former club pro in Maine. “It’s so rare. And to do it in back-to-back swings. Talk about a (career) highlight. And to have it be with a friend of mine.”
Because Lussier and Brown both play every Saturday in a foursome, they requested to be paired together for the event at Heritage. They were joined by Kurt Wicklund and Andrew Weiss, two golfers they didn’t know. When the group reached the par-3, 155-yard No. 15 hole, Wicklund and Weiss shot first.
Grabbing his 7-iron, Lussier, a 10-handicapper, drove his ball straight down the middle. “I saw it hit the green and that’s all I saw. I knew I hit it straight at the hole.”
“I could see it land, but I couldn’t see it run up,” said Brown, who owns a 6 handicap. “We’re not jumping up and down screaming.” Brown then selected an 8-iron to hit a shot so well, he said to Lussier, “That’s got a chance to be inside your ball.”
The two got in their cart and drove to the green, where Wicklund and Weiss already stood, and spotted two balls, each about 15 feet past the hole. “We thought those were our balls,” Lussier said. “I got out of the cart,” Brown said, “and said, ‘Georges, this is weird. Why are there no balls up by the hole?’” Because it had rained and the greens were soft, Brown spotted two balls marks, one a foot in front of the hole, the other 10 feet in front.
One of Lussier’s and Brown’s playing partners then walked up to the hole and said, “There’s two balls in the hole.” Once the shock had worn off, Wicklund and Weiss proceeded to putt for a birdie and par, meaning the foursome was 5-under for the hole.
Last month, in England, two men recorded consecutive holes-in-one, each using the same club. But in July, at the Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono, Maine, something perhaps even more rare happened to Steve Norton and Susan Hunter. After Norton recorded an ace on the 154-yard No. 4 hole. Hunter followed him with an almost identical shot. But as her ball neared the hole, it deflected away.
Actually, it had gone in the hole, but since COVID-19, golf courses in Maine were mandated either to turn the cup upside down in the hole, or place inside a piece of foam, the idea being golfers could avoid germs from touching the bottom of the cup. With Norton’s ball already in a hole with a shallower bottom, Hunter’s ball popped up , depriving the two the notoriety now shared by Lussier and Brown.
It was Lussier’s third hole-in-one and Brown’s second, his first coming in his 20s. As for back-to-back aces, he said it’s never been done on the PGA or European tours.
“A lot of people get holes-in-one,” Brown said.
No one does this.
Hey, Heritage, spring for the bigger plaque.