The Loop
New Jersey golfer aces the same hole twice in one day
Masters Sunday can provide quite a quandary for avid golfers, especially when the tournament is played during a holiday. You have to decide if you can fit a bit of golf in at some point in the day before tuning into the final round, or do you keep the peace at home and stick with family activities, thereby "earning" you the right to settle in to see who gets to wear the green jacket?
Joel Ramin, a member at Bayonne Golf Club in New Jersey, may have set the pattern for himself and the rest of us based on what he did last Sunday, and it's all good. His method: get your golf in, reap the rewards, and finish in time to watch the Masters afterward. By choosing to play golf before the back-nine drama at Augusta, Ramin played 36 holes with just a caddie and came away with a pair of aces on the same hole.
*Bayonne (N.J.) Golf Club member Joel Ramin with his keepsakes
from Sunday's memorable round. Photo courtesy Bayonne Golf Club
Playing from the blue tees first on the course located on New York Harbor, Ramin used a gap wedge from 118 yards to ace the fifth hole, which is the shortest at Bayonne. Coming through the second time playing the white tees, he aced the fifth from 106 yards using a 54-degree wedge.
Golf Digest doesn't have the exact odds for two aces made on the same hole on the same day. The closest we have figured is two aces in the same round by a low-handicap player, which is 67 million to 1. We figure the odds are closer to what we have for two average players acing the same hole in the same group, which is 17 million to 1. But we just don't have an exactly similar set of odds.
The feat does have precedence, but not much. Golf Digest has recorded roughly 125 instances of a golfer acing two holes on the same day, but the aces occurred on different holes in an 18-hole round. Acing the same hole twice in one day hasn't happened very often. Mr. Ramin's effort is the 12th of that kind in our records. We have three instances of a pair of players acing the same hole on a 9-hole course, one player the first time around and the other the second. And then there are the numerous times when a golfer has aced the same hole anywhere from one day to 42 years apart.
But we can certainly appreciate the good karma Ramin had Sunday: he played, he aced, he watched the Masters. Undoubtedly one of the best trifectas in golf.
-- Cliff Schrock