Block party
Michael Block can’t stop doing Michael Block things, makes hole-in-one in head-to-head challenge with Wayne Gretzky
Keyur Khamar
Michael Block’s 15 minutes of fame—which actually lingered far longer than that thanks to the man’s penchant for being in the right place at the right time—finally appeared to time out in May. The darling California teaching professional, after charming the golf world at Oak Hill during the 2023 PGA Championship and riding that the good will to worldwide notoriety, seemed to fade from view with a missed cut in his return to the PGA in 2024.
But you know what they say about the big man: You can’t stop Blockie, you can only hope to contain him. Indeed, just when the Block party seemed to flame out, the ambers remained, ready to be stoked at just the right moment. And that moment came Friday in Montreal.
In conjunction with the Presidents Cup, Michelob hosted an “activation” event dubbed the Ultra Hole Challenge in which Block sharing top billing with Canadian legend Wayne Gretzky. The duo would battle on Friday after Day 2’s play at Royal Montreal to see if one of them could make a hole in one under the lights at nearby Golf St-Raphael. Each would get 90 attempts to see what they could do.
It's the kind of event that serves both Block and Gretzky. Expecting either of them to hole the shot would be a long shot, but not so out of the world that it couldn’t happen.
And sure enough it did, courtesy of Block:
It's unclear how many of his 90 attempts Block used before making his ace, which is believed to be at least the sixth of his life. Mind you, Block has had more impactful aces in his career, the one that came while playing with Rory McIlroy in the third round of the 2023 PGA being the most notable. But this one was fun too.
Block said in an interview this summer that he made a hole-in-one while shooting a promotional video with Gretzky for the event earlier this summer.
Interesting side note: Gretzky has only made a hole-in-one once in his life. It came at Sherwood Country Club, where he’s a member in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Dec. 30, 2021.