Senior Classic: Golfers young and old have come up aces on the course

Aces, man. Aces wild. Aces eerie. Aces mysterious. Aces all over the place. There have been so many strange and wacky holes-in-one that we're overdue for an accounting of them. So here goes.

As Louis Armstrong sang, What a wonderful world. The world of holes-in-one, that is.

Let's start in the recent past, Aug. 30 to be precise. A youngster was playing her very first round of golf at the Unionville Golf Course in Canada. It's a par-three layout, and Vivienne Potter had prepared for her first foray onto a course by going to a driving range a couple of times. Her mom had just purchased a new set of clubs and gave her old set to Vivienne.

Mom had a plan: She hoped her daughter would take up golf. Take it up she did, with quite the shot. Vivienne holed out from the tee with her first shot on a real golf hole.

Easy game, huh? Vivienne's ace came on a 95-yard hole. As her mother wrote in a note, "She does not realize people go through their whole life and never get a hole-in-one."

But Vivienne Potter is hardly alone when it comes to kids getting aces. How about Matthew Stuart, who got one on the 86-yard, par-three seventh hole at Fox Ridge Country Club in Washington, Ind. Stuart was 5 years 3 months 5 days old when he became the youngest known player to get an ace on a U.S. course. The great event happened last fall. Maybe it should have been expected. Stuart was wearing a T-shirt that had Tiger Woods' likeness on it.

Albert Israel is too mature to wear such a shirt. But he was on his way to being one those unfortunate souls who go through life without an ace. But last spring Israel, having just resigned from his position as president of Tip Top Tailors in Toronto, was singing another tune. It might have been "Oh, what a lucky man I am."

Israel had reached the age of 49 without ever having marked a one on his card. Unburdened of his presidential responsibilities, he went out for a game of golf on the day he resigned. He was playing the 16th hole at the Glen Cedars club northeast of Toronto when it happened, 163 yards away from where he was standing.

"I pulled out a 5-iron," Israel recalled. "I think we saw it bounce, and then it hit the pole and dropped. It was weird, because I had just resigned that morning. I couldn't believe it. It seemed like the two events were connected. It almost seemed like an acknowledgment that I had done the right thing in resigning."

Golfers do assign mystical meaning to their aces, because no matter how often we hear of holes-in-one they are still exciting and even incomprehensible. How, after all, can a golf ball find that little hole cut in the ground from so far away? Don't ask.

And yet aces do happen, and sometimes it's not so far-fetched to think that something otherworldly is at work. Two years ago, Michael Williams, one of the best golf writers in the world, died. Williams was 63 and wrote for the Daily Telegraph in England. He loved to walk the courses and follow players in tournaments. In fact Williams had just returned from watching Tiger Woods win the Masters by 12 shots.

Williams was playing his beloved Chelmsford course -- his home club -- with his son Roddy. This was two days after that memorable Masters. He and his son were having a friendly match and Michael was one-up as they stood on the fourth tee.

Both father and son hit the green on the par-three hole. Soon after, Williams collapsed and died of a massive heart attack.

Four weeks later his wife Judy, the ladies' captain at Chelmsford, was playing the course. She got to the fourth hole, teed it up and holed out. That was her first hole-in-one, on the same hole where her husband had hit his last shot and died.

Go figure. Better yet, don't try. There's no explanation for the way things happen.

Something odd was also experienced by another British writer not long ago. Derek Lawrenson writes for London's Sunday Telegraph. He's also a big-time supporter of the main soccer club in Liverpool, and so was thrilled to play in a pro-am last May with two of the team's stars.

Lawrenson, an eight-handicapper, holed out on the 190-yard 15th hole with a 3-iron. His prize? A Lamborghini Diablo worth $425,000. Lawrenson couldn't believe his luck. He and his wife had just had their first child and were moving into a new home. He had the option of selling the car and coming out with about $300,000, and decided to go that route.

Lawrenson had a problem, however. He really didn't want to lose his amateur status but had no choice. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews was obliged to rescind his amateur status because he had accepted a prize whose value exceeded the limit allowed.

But Lawrenson is a writer; he knows how to express himself and so he fired off a long and thoughtful letter to the R&A. He made the point that a hole-in-one is a lucky shot and that prizes that accrue for an ace should be exempt from amateur-status regulations.

"I thought I wrote a very logical letter in presenting my argument," Lawrenson said. "The amateur-status committee met and sent me a letter informing me of the decision. The letter was brief. It said, 'Thank you for your letter. The committee has met. It doesn't agree.' "

Lawrenson took the money. Of course, he took the money. Who wouldn't?

At least Lawrenson's shot was a good one, right on the money so to speak. That wasn't the case when Todd Obuchowski holed out last spring on the 116-yard fourth hole at Beaver Brook Golf Club in Williamsburg, Mass.

Obuchowski used a 7-wood on the hole, which seems like a lot of club for such a short hole. But the 34-year-old knew what he was doing, although the shot was indeed long. No worries. The ball sailed over the green and out of the course. It smashed into the door of a car that was passing by, rebounded back over a fence and on to the course, hit the green running about eight feet from the hole and fell in. Really. It's a true story.

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