The Currituck Club

Several years ago I was with a golf group at a massive, multi-golf course resort near Shenzhen, China. On our first day, we all had a chuckle when our caddies, young ladies in their teens and early twenties, showed up at the first tee wearing helmets. The caddies didn’t seem too knowledgeable about golf, yet they were very helpful and accommodating. After each shank or dribbler, they’d still say “good shot”. They were also incessantly offering us ice cold Tsingtao beers. On the third day of our trip, my playing partners, Tom and Hal and I, were crashing and burning. We decided to address our futility by accepting a beer per hole. By the time we arrived at the par 3 number 16th hole, the swing oil had fully kicked in and we crazily decided to hit simultaneous tee shots. It was just starting to get dark and visibility was dwindling. I hit one of my worst shots of the day, a hosel rocket about 75 yards to the right side into some bushes. What happened next is what Jim Nantz would describe as “one for the ages.” As we walked towards the green, one of the caddies spotted a ball in the hole and started screaming “one in hole”, “one in hole”. We looked at each other and in unison commented, “No freakin’ way”.  A few moments later my partners examined the ball in the hole and decided it was mine. Before I could tell them about my shank, the caddies started jumping up and down yelling “one in hole, Mr. Ed made one in hole.” At that point I played along and high-fived everybody surmising that it was just a crazy incident on the course soon to be forgotten. Wrong. When we returned to the clubhouse one of the managers was there to greet me and thank me for making a “magnificent hole in one at our resort”. Later that night at a group dinner, the resort staff wheeled in a gigantic bottle of champagne and glasses of sake to celebrate my amazing accomplishment. I had unwittingly attained some sort of dubious celebrity status at the resort. After the dinner, our group leader whispered to me, “Please don’t ever let our hosts know the real story as it would be extremely insulting to them.” I never said a word and when I returned to my home in Florida my wife informed me of a package that had just arrived. It was a hole-in-one certificate with a big wood number one mantel piece. To this day, my playing partners, or the group in front of us, has not admitted any skullduggery in the incident. And, whenever anyone asks if I’ve had a hole-in-one, I reply, “Sort of, if you’ve got a few minutes I’ll tell you all about it.”