MINTO – Some golfers will go their whole life without ever feeling the glory of hitting the hole-in-one but an avid golfer at a Wellington County golf course got to experience this recently twice at the same hole on back-to-back days.
It was the third hole, a par-three of about 140 yards described as picturesque, at Pike Lake Golf Centre near Mount Forest where Burlington’s Glen Montgomery pulled off this unlikely feat on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 using a nine-iron teeing off from different tees each time.
“We heard it hit the flag but then we didn’t know what happened to it until we got up to the hole and there it was,” he said, explaining the first hole-in-one. “It had made a pretty big mark on the side of the hole.”
This was not his first ever ace, he had one a few years back on hole 10, but it was nonetheless a cause for celebration for Montgomery and friends.
“We played again the next day and all of us were feeling a little bit rough,” he explained.
He was first to hit off the third hole and they saw it land but not where it went after that. Two friends of his said they saw it go in the hole.
“I’m like, ‘you guys are totally f***ing with me, there’s no way,’” Montgomery said.
They yelled out to the group in front of them to see if there was a ball on the green and they couldn’t. Sure enough, the ball was in the hole and Montgomery had hit another hole-in-one.
Greg Shaw, head pro at Pike Lake, said based on online research the odds of this are about 17 million to one.
“Back-to-back days, we’ve never seen anything close to that before,” said Shaw.
Shaw said hole-in-ones do tend to come in batches. This season they only had one into mid-July and then they had five in five straight days before there being a lull again until now.
“My boss George has been in the golf business his whole life, he waited 60 or 65 years to get his first,” Shaw said. “Then he got a second a week later.”
Celebrating the second hole-in-one was a bit quieter than the first for Montgomery but he noted the couple he was playing with have been friends of his since he got a place at Pike Lake 12 years ago.
“It’s nice to be able to share that with them,” he said.
