Sutton won 14 times on Tour, including two wins at The Players. It turned out to be the right club, and Sutton went on to win the tournament over a charging Tiger Woods. Norman Manley holds the record for most hole in ones with Manley shot his first hole in one in Although Allenby and Sutton hold the record for most aces on the PGA Tour, one man blows them away in career holes in one. Norman Manley, a golfer from California, made an incredible 59 holes in one in his lifetime.
Either way, 59 holes in one will likely never be bested. All stats courtesy of National Hole in One Insurance.
By his 20th birthday, Davis had shot his age in aces, the only golfer ever known to have one for every candle on his cake. In every instance, eyewitnesses could vouch. One was Terry Alsup, also from Odessa, who watched Davis make two: the first when Alsup was a high school senior and Davis was 11, the second nearly 15 years later, when they worked at the same course as assistant club pros. As Alsup, now 73, recalls, both shots benefited from friendly bounces, one off a tarp, the other a skidder with a fairway wood that shook the stick and dropped.
What Davis dreamed of playing was the PGA Tour, which he did, for an eye-blink, in the s, Monday qualifying into three events. For a year, he scratched it out on the Canadian Tour, barely breaking even. He had grit and gumption. An emblematic moment came during the Monday qualifier for the Bryon Nelson Classic, when Davis hooked a tee ball out-of-bounds and off the course, across two lanes of an adjacent freeway. He missed qualifying by a single shot. Davis came aboard as an assistant an pro.
Though he still fantasized about a life on Tour, this was a life within his reach, and a nice life at that. Both became golf buddies, thought they cut contrasting figures on the course.
Where Nelson played shirtless, in friendly games, with a cloud of marijuana smoke wafting in his wake, Knievel was a hustler, drawn to high stakes matches against guys with names like Little Dog, Slim and Red. When they played at the Woodlands, Knievel and his cohort brought their own bagmen. Not caddies. Actual bagmen, hauling suitcases filled with cash so that wagers could be settled after every hole.
In the many rounds he played with both the singer and the stuntman, Davis recognized that they had one trait in common. Davis himself continued making plenty, including one during a playing lesson on the 3rd hole at the Woodlands. Let the record show that the 3rd is a par-4, and that Davis, in his lifetime, has 10 double-eagles, another category in which he tops the field. His secret, he liked to say, was that he aimed at the hole. In that way, he was unlike Ben Hogan, who recorded just four aces in the course of his career, a figure Hogan explained in classic Hogan fashion: He rarely deemed it sensible to fire straight at the flag.
I could see it all in living color. Where he wound up making some dough was as the King of Aces, a character dreamed up for him by John Everhart, a Dallas insurance salesman with a creative streak. In , when the two men first crossed paths, Everhart was exploring a niche sector that would soon become an industry staple: He sold hole-in-one-insurance, coverage for prize giveaways at golf events. At the time, this was a novelty. The sweet spot, he discovered, was the overlapping interests of auto dealerships and tournament organizers: By rolling out a Cadillac alongside a par-3, you could advertise the car while generating buzz for the event.
A good business, no doubt, and Everhart wanted a face to help promote it, someone with golf street-cred. He reached out to Art Wall, the former Masters champ and then record-holder for holes-in-one by a pro, with But Wall was too expensive, a non-starter. A few weeks passed. Everhart was on the verge of giving up his search when he stumbled across an article in the Dallas Morning News. In exchange for a percentage of each policy sold, Davis would adopt an alter-ego, the King of Aces, a roving PR man and entertainer, a fixture at trade shows and corporate outings.
One of his roles was to stand at a par-3 at charity events, smacking shots with each group that passed through. That happened twice. In both cases, Davis waited for the last groups to go by then finished out the round to make his ace official. There were downsides to the gig, Davis says, like the regal costume he was sometimes asked to wear, a getup he found goofy, with a purple robe and crown. But mostly he enjoyed it. In , Davis and Everhart parted ways after a contract disagreement.
But their union had been fruitful. It helped birth an industry, and supplied Davis with grist for the storytelling mill. The slip up that sticks with Davis came in One morning, in the throes of tournament setup, he showed up early to help out.
In the pre-dawn dimness, he saw a woman struggling with some cargo. In fact, the odds are stacked 3, to 1 for a tour player making a hold in one, while the odds of an average player making a hole in one jump to 12, to 1. Even more, one player making two holds in one in the same round boasts a 67 million to 1 chance. A hole in one is scored once in every 3, rounds, making them particularly hard to come by.
However, , holes in ones are scored each year. The first ace was made by Tom Morris in the British Open. The longest hole in one ever recorded was yards and made by a man named Mike Crean in Denver.
This hole in one is recognized by the US Golf Registry as the longest hole in one ever recorded. While the majority of hole in ones are made on par 3 holes, which have a shorter distance to the hole, it is possible, but rare, to get a hole in one on a par four or par five. Shaun Lynch achieved a hole in one on a par 5 with a 3-iron in The distance he needed to cover was yards.
While some golfers play for years without shooting a hole in one, others manage to make it at an early age. In fact, the youngest golfer to get a hole in one is Jake Paine, who was just three years old.
Paine shot a hole in one, just barely out of diapers, on a 65 yard hole. The oldest player to make a hole in one?
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