OK, so I hope this doesn't get too long, but a story and a question.
A few of the local courses do a "Masters Par 3 Contest" tournament on the first day of the Masters every year. What they do is go out onto the front 9 of their course and set up tee boxes in the fairways that are the same distances as the holes the pros play on Wednesday at Augusta's par 3 course. The longest hole is 140 and the shortest is 70 yards. it's fun. They throw in a couple of free drink coupons and some food after the round, and everybody has a good time.
The weather was decent; clear but cool. It got cold fast as the sun was going down for the last couple of holes.
Not much wind until the last few holes. I played like crap. I haven't played in forever, and I went straight from work and didn't even have time to loosen up. The course has the most difficult, undulating greens of any course in Tidewater, and I didn't know that they had recently punched them, but they had. The putting was really tough. I had at least two putts that were in except that they took hard bounces off the uneven turf and lipped out.
To make matters worse, I got a case of the sh@nks. It showed up on our 5th hole, leading to a double-bogey 5. Then, on our 8th hole, I hit another hosel rocket, this one went out of bounds. This was the 140-yard hole, uphill, into the wind, and the temps around 50 (wind chill about 45), and with the steepest green on the course, so I felt fortunate to par my second ball and walk off with a double bogey there, too. 9 over after 8 short little par 3 holes. 😫
So, anyway, we got to the final tee. It was freezing by then and the wind had kicked up. It was listed as 115, but with the cold and the wind, I played it as 125. Another really tough, undulating green.
I hit my ball and it was super pure. Felt great, and was headed right at the flag. I wasn't sure about the distance, and because the hole was uphill, there is foreshortening that makes it even harder to tell distances. But it looked good the whole way. As it landed on the green just barely left of the hole and hopped, it was headed right for the flag. Again, from where I was and in the fading light of day, I couldn't really tell; it could've been 15 short or 15 to 20 feet past, but it looked like it was moving toward the hole. One of the guys I got paired with shouts "Get IN" like he really thinks it is going to, and I watch as it looks like it might, but does not disappear from sight.
Driving up to the hole I figured it was probably 10 feet past or something and just looked close because of foreshortening, but when I got to the green I saw that the ball was about 10 inches past the cup, directly behind it. A putt from 10 feet below would be expected to break about 4 inches right. I found my ball mark about 12 feet short of the hole and maybe a couple of inches left. The ball worked TOWARD the hole as it rolled out, and ended maybe 1 inch right and 10 inches past. I figure it couldn't have missed the edge of the cup by more than about an inch.
In other words, I almost made a hole-in-one. I thought, wow, that would really have changed my mind about the round. "How'd you do?" "Two sh@nks and a hole-in-one!" would be a very unusual reply, wouldn't it? But then I got to thinking about it. If it had gone in, would it have counted? Would you have told people you got a hole-in-one?
Also, it's funny how perspective changes. If you had asked me, on the "tee" of our 9th hole, coming off a sh@nk-fueled double-bogey, if I would be happy with a tap-in birdie on 9, I would have undoubtedly said, "Heck yeah." Walking off that green with a tap-in birdie I was somewhat disappointed that I didn't get the "ace." I wish I had camera footage from the green. With my luck, the punched green threw the ball out of the hole the same way it did on a 5-foot putt two holes earlier. 😢