Just Another trip to Okoboji

I finally did it. I've been chasing the elusive hole-in-one for 50 years. I've had dozens of eagles on par 5s, and maybe 15 eagles on par 4s, and even an albatross, a 2 on a par 5, but never a hole-in-one, until Sunday, May 17, that is. I was up at Lake Okoboji in northern Iowa for a long golfing weekend with several buddies, Bob, Jerry, and Troy. I've been going up there with Bob and Jerry for about 15 years the weekend before Memorial Day weekend. Jerry and Bob have been going up there even longer. Troy is a more recent addition. We play at three courses: Emerald Hills, Okoboji View, and Brooks National. On Saturday we played 18 at Emerald. On Sunday, we played 36 holes at Okoboji View golf and on #7 the first time around, a 175 yard par 3, I finally got my ace. I hit my hybrid 3 iron over the water to an elevated green and zeroed it in perfectly. It landed on the green, took a couple of bounces, hit the pin, and dropped in! Yahoo! Whoopee! Kudos to me! Now the thing is, because the green was elevated, we could tell it was a good shot, and Troy said he thought it might have gone in, but I thought it might have been too long and gone over the green. We were playing a game called Wolf in which you pick a partner each hole based on a rotation and the shots made and it was Jerry's turn and he did not pick me based upon my thinking I might have been over the green. My ball was in the bottom of the cup and we didn't know for sure. When we got up there we located everyone's ball but mine, so Troy checked out the cup and there it was! Since Jerry chose Troy for a partner on that hole and not me, Bob and I earned six skins! And at a quarter a skin, that's some big money, $1.50. Bob and Jerry have had multiple holes-in-one, and Troy is still waiting. All in all, we have a great time playing in the wind and the chill and the sunshine. We played Monday at Brooks in a howling cold wind. After all was said and done, we played four rounds of golf in three days, I made about $5.00, parred a hole I had never parred before, and even got an ace. I'm now in the Omaha World Herald Hole-in-One Database! (one of 4382). btw - for a long time the world record length for a hole-in-one was in Omaha, Ne at Miracle Hills Golf Course: The longest straight shot hole in one in golf history was hit by Robert Mitera on October 7, 1965 at the Miracle Hills Golf Club in Omaha, Nebraska. Mitera used his driver to ace the 10th hole from 444 yards! Mitera couldn't even see the flag from where he teed off. He only realized he'd aced the hole when he arrived at the green and another golfer told him his ball was in the hole. That was surpassed in 2007 when a 448 yard hole was aced in Hawaii although the "straight-line" ace at Miracle is a different type than a hole-in-one made by cutting a dogleg. The odds of an amateur golfer getting a hole-in-one are about one in 12,500 according to one online encyclopedia. Jack Nicklaus has 20. Tiger Woods has 18. Jerry (above) has four and Bob (above) has three, including two hit on two different continents within 10 days. World Herald's Mike Kelly wrote about those two. Sam Snead had 42. Former North Korean Supreme dictator Kim Jong-Il, now deceased, was said to have had 11 holes-in-one during one round of golf although everyone who questioned that was executed. On the other hand, only 18 professional golfers have had an albatross, that is, a double-eagle, one of which I have, in a major tournament with a total of about 80 men and women golfers in the history of professional golf tournaments. The odds of getting an albatross are calculated to be a million to one. I got that albatross about 20 years ago on Benson Golf Course's 514 yard par 5, #11, on a chilly windy day using a 3 wood and a 7 iron.