I am one of the millions of active golfers who have never had a hole-in-one.
The closest I ever came was at Southbroom on the KZN south coast, where a perfectly struck wedge to the glorious 4th hole finished one roll short of the perfection required.
According to science, the average club golfer has a one in 12 500 chance of making a hole-in-one. That translates to one for every 694 rounds of 18 holes. Let’s suppose that you play once a week, that’s just over 13 years. Golf is, of course, a game for life, so if you start young and stay healthy, you might expect to make five holes-in-one in your lifetime.
That seems fair to me. All golfers know the feeling of a terrible round that concludes with a birdie at the last. ‘It will make you come back’ is the familiar rejoinder. Similarly, a hole-in-one every 13 years ought to ensure your return. ‘Why do you still do it?’ says an exasperated family member. ‘I can’t stop now. I’m only four years and five months away from my next hole in one.’
According to the bookmakers, it’s different for good players. The odds for a single-figure handicapper are more than halved, coming in at 5 000 to 1. That translates as one in every 278 rounds. It’s safe to assume that good players play more often than bad ones, so maybe 100 rounds a year means a perfect shot every third year.
For professional golfers, the odds tumble to 3 000 to 1. Taking into account the odd missed cut and breaks in the schedule, but including practice rounds and pro-ams, let’s say the average pro plays close to four times a week. Knock off the rough edges and make that 200 rounds a year, and our pro should make a hole-in-one about once a year.
I suspect from a probability perspective that that’s not far from the mark, but real life tends to muck up probability, which is why Douglas Adams came up with the infinite improbability drive in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He posited that anything that ‘is a virtual impossibility … must logically be a finite improbability’.
But the fact of the matter is that algorithms are nowhere near as reliable as we would like to think and this explains why we all know good players who have never had a hole-in-one and bad players who have had lots. And furthermore, the perfect shot that I spoke of earlier is, in many instances, far from perfect.
It is 22 years since James Kingston won a brand-new Audi at Houghton for a hole-in-one at the Dunhill Championship. He hooked his 4-iron into the trees left of the 15th hole, uttered a curse as he left the tee box and wondered why people were clapping. His ball had clattered through the branches, dropped onto the green and fallen into the cup. He said afterwards that it was his fifth ace, ‘but those were all real holes-in-one. This was just a fluke.’
Which rather brings us back to where we started. I have never had a hole-in-one, but that doesn’t mean I am a bad golfer, it’s just that I haven’t got lucky yet.
If spared, I might have another 20 years of golf left in me. At one every 13 years, I’m bound to get one sooner rather than later. So the next time you peg it up, remember it’s not a virtual impossibility, it’s merely a finite improbability.
– This column first appeared in the October 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.