It turns out golf is pretty easy. You just hit the ball and watch it go in the hole.
Or at least you do if you’re Frank Bensel Jr. The 56-year-old club pro from New York made USGA history at the U.S. Senior Open on Friday with back-to-back aces.
Yes, you read that right. Bensel made a hole-in-one on consecutive holes at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.
First, he whacked a six-iron on the par-3 No. 4 hole from 173 yards out and watched it roll into the cup. As cameras were racing to catch up with him, Bensel did it again on the par-3 No. 5 from 202 yards out with the same club in his hand.
Bensel claimed he didn’t see the first shot, but knew what happened when he heard the crowd react. He saw the second shot the whole way.
“I was kidding around, like, okay, now let’s go for another one, and it happened to go in,” Bensel told reporters after he finished the round. “Everybody just couldn’t believe it. We all went nuts.”
Making the moment even more memorable is that Bensel had his 14-year-old son, Hagen, on his bag — though his father’s accomplishment may come with a little bit of ribbing for the caddie, who initially suggested Bensel hit a 7-iron.
The odds of acing two holes in the same round is 67 million to one, according to the National Hole-in-One Registry. The odds of two aces back-to-back? Well, those weren’t as easy to find. So instead we asked ChatGPT to calculate them and here’s what our robot overlords came up with:
TL;DR: That’s 156.25 million or so to 1.
Making the round much more relatable is the fact Bensel finished with a 4-over 74, but really, who cares about that now?
Frank Bensel Jr. will be telling this story for the rest of his life and if he wants to put it on his tombstone after, not a single person could blame him.