Minnesota Golfer - Fall 2021 - 4

EDITOR'S
LE T T ER
Welcome to the Club
T
" The odds of
two players
in the same
foursome acing
the same hole
are 17 million
to 1, and the
odds of acing
the same hole
more than once
in 1,000 rounds
are 1 in 200. "
he late Robin Williams' riff on how
the Scots took whacking a ball into
a gopher hole to the next
level
is
comedy gold. Available on youtube.com for
mature audiences, Williams delivers a zinger
on why the golf swing is called a stroke:
because every time you swing at the ball and
miss, you feel like you're going to die.
Ben Hogan famously said that golf is a
game of the fewest (or best) misses: he was
happy if he hit two shots a round exactly the
way he intended.
Laughs aside, Williams' and Hogan's
insights are remarkably similar: the better we
manage our worst efforts, the lower our score.
But who dwells on their whiffs, scuffs or
shanks? It's the clutch putt, the sound up-anddown
from a greenside bunker, and the fairway
split with the best drive of the day shots
that keep us enthralled with the game.
Likewise, in four-plus decades playing golf,
I've seen at least four aces, but not my own,
which came at an uphill, partially blind par 3.
After briefly searching in the frog hair short
of the green, I was dumbstruck to find the
ball in the cup: it was a perfect miss (I was
aiming left of the green). Although not a witness,
the late Jack Emich, a member of the
club and the longtime executive director of
the Maryland State Golf Association, gave the
ace his blessing, but only if I agreed to make it
official by returning the next day and finishing
the round.
MGA Staffer Anne Mullen, 45, of Eden
Prairie, and a member of LeSueur Country
Club, bucked the odds, or mocked the golf
gods (take your pick), after acing the par-3
10th hole at LeSueur, not once but twice during
consecutive rounds in July (see story, p.
22). This writer witnessed the first " perfect
shot, " a 140-yard 8-iron, which Mullen, a 17.6
handicap index, expertly banked the ball off of
a hill and, destiny taking over, it rolled into the
cup. There were hugs and kisses from husband
Don, high-fives, and lots of hooting and hollering
from the nearby clubhouse patio.
On her next visit three weeks later, and
with infinitely more skill than luck, Mullen
threw a dart at the 10th green, one-hopping
a 9-iron from 108 yards directly into the cup.
Mullen was again accompanied by Don, who,
for the record, is without an ace after taking
up the game 35 years ago. Coincidentally,
another MGA staffer, Joel Comstock, who
also belongs to the rarified hole-in-one club,
witnessed Mullen's second ace.
The odds of joining the hole-in-one club
are 13,000 to 1; lower for the scratch golfer,
say 5,000 to 1. The odds of two players in the
same foursome acing the same hole are 17
million to 1, and the odds of acing the same
hole more than once in 1,000 rounds are 1
in 200. That puts Mullen's efforts somewhere
between 17 million and 200,000 to 1.
Welcome to the club.
W.P. Ryan, Editor-in-Chief
4
MINNESOTAGOLFER Fall 2021
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Minnesota Golfer - Fall 2021

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