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MEMORIAL HOLE-IN-ONE 5/29/2010 6:13:18 AM
Memorial Day usually falls on a Monday, and in broadcasting, holidays worked netted me an average 30 days more vacation each year. I recall one particular Memorial Day when my radio show came from Island Valley Golf Course in Rochester, NY. When the weather was decent, as it rarely was, I worked outdoors, on the portico overlooking the 9th hole.
One final Monday in May a foursome, which included my close friend, recording star *** *****, approached that hole and prepared to tee-off from an area that rendered the green completely “blind.” With a patch of tall pines blocking the golfer’s view, it was impossible to see the green from the tee, a scant 145 yards away. One had either to power a wedge or 9-iron over the pines, or hook a ball around them, for any hope of a par 3 on this treacherous hole. During my years broadcasting from Island Valley, the norm was 7 strokes on ol' number 9-—and that was among low handicap golfers.
The day that *** ***** played there I was watching as a ball flew over the trees and landed on the green roughly twenty-five feet from the pin. As I could not been seen by the golfers, and noticing no one else was watching, I bolted off the porch, ran across the green, picked up the ball—and dropped it surreptitiously into the cup.
A few minutes later, the foursome appeared around the pine patch, pulling their carts and searched for their errant tee shots. All of them located their Titleists and Spaldings-—except for *** ****. After interminable minutes, someone looked in the cup and screamed, “Jeeper’s Sox, ***, you numskull, you got a hole-in-one!”
In the clubhouse that afternoon and evening, it was pandemonium. *** had never even come close to a hole-in-one before, and though this one was bogus, he pulled out all the stops. His bar and restaurant tab (not to mention his long distance calls) had to be over $2,500—-and, of course, I never, to this day, had the nerve to burst his balloon.
This occurred so long ago I cannot remember the exact year, and I had completely forgotten the incident until I received an e-mail from my kid brother Jack last week informing me he had stroked a bona fide hole-in-one for the very first time on May 21. I call him my “kid” brother even as he approaches his 74th birthday, about five years after I had mine.
Jack still lives on the frozen tundra in Western New York, and he put the coup de grace on his golf game at Twin Hills C.C. in Spencerport. He used a No. 4 Hybrid club on the 145 yard Hole No. 3, and according to his witness, Sam Arnone, had he been using a Shield LaMons ball he would have received a deluxe set of Callaway irons, Ping woods and a 2010 Cadillac SRX for his effort. Knowing Jack, he was hitting a 59˘ Top-Flite Used—or a stolen striped floater from Seabreeze’s miniature course.
Of course, I am eaten with envy. In the 50+ years I played golf on some of the world’s finest courses, logging probably 20,000 rounds, I never came within ten feet of a hole-in-one. As an aficionado of golf (and tennis,) I was as good an amateur as could lie with the best of them—-until arthritis landed me on the DL_—yet I was never better at golf than a 16 handicap, and I was once beaten before two thousand screaming fans by a tennis club pro who played against me with a 16” frying pan (I had him 6-0 in a pro-set but wound up losing 6-8.)
Anyway, the National Hole-in-One Registry sent me a copy of Jack’s 'certificate of authenticity,' and he has been duly inscribed with the other 12,903,845,382 amateurs in the LHF (Linksmen’s Hall of Fame) in St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland—-along with *** ***** of ***** Records. Perhaps the Gods of Par frowned on me because of the dastardly practical joke I perpetrated so any years ago on the handsome young vocalist.
If so, it was a bum rap.
So, next May I’m off to Scotland to see the Jack Mills Hole-in-One Plaque on display for the entire month in the King James IV Hall at the Royal and Ancient St. Andrews Club House. If I have time, I may stop at Edinburgh Castle and lay a wreath at Mills Mount, atop the bastion where officers’ dogs are buried (our poodle Max, who was French, not Scottish, passed away on May 19, 2007.)
In any event, heartiest congratulations to l’il bro Jack, the one member of this dubious dynasty who has driven deliciously where none other has dared dabble before. Even his wife Mary is inordinately proud of him. When he sallied forth to join his cronies this Memorial Day weekend, she stuck a spare pair of socks in his golf bag.
“What’re these for?” he asked.
“Oh, they’re just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Just in case,” she explained, “you get another hole in one.”
