Ace Malley
What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.
Arnold Palmer
“Be good.”
Like a Pavlovian dog conditioned to associate comfort with food, those two little words advised me to focus on the moment at hand. Instead of mindlessly rummaging through my golf bag in search of the perfect weapon of mass destruction, I turned my attention skyward to follow the flight of a small white projectile. It was easy to spot the dimpled-face sphere, framed against the backdrop of a steel gray sky, hurtling in a high, lazy, nearly slow motion arc. Like the blue light of a laser aimed ruthlessly at its target, the ball never left the path toward a burnt-orange flagstick, located a fateful 145 yards away.
“Be good” is a mythical phrase uttered by golfers to inform themselves, and their playmates, that they have hit a shot worthy of a Nicklausian moment. The all-too-rare combination of perfect timing and exquisite tempo manufactured by their golf swing has conspired to launch the ball toward a green-bound moment of immaculate reception. Well struck, well directed and possibly well intentioned, there may even be the slightest chance that the 1.68-inch diameter ball could roll, bounce, or ricochet its way into the 4 ¼ inch-wide hole. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a birdie, a par or a quintuple-squared bogey; the damn ball is going toward the hole.
Making a hole-in-one (also known as an “ace”) is hard. Really hard. How hard? According to the National Hole-In-One Association (yes, there is such a thing), the odds for an average amateur golfer to make an ace are 12,500 to 1. The odds fall to 2,500 to 1 for the pros. In any given year, approximately 150,000 holes-in-one are made from an estimated 500 million rounds of golf. No matter how you slice it (or it my case, duck-hook it), making an ace is difficult. Unless you’re Tiger Woods, who scored his first hole-in-one at the ripe old age of 6.
Pebble Beach, CA is one of those hallowed destinations on every golfer’s Bucket List, so making a hole-in-one anywhere inside the 17-Mile Drive is reason to celebrate. And speaking of celebration, an American hole-in-one tradition holds that the lucky recipient buys a round of drinks for all of his friends at the 19th hole. Which is why, after watching his ball land two inches in front of the 17th green at Poppy Hills Golf Club and then roll like a putt thirty feet into the bottom of the cup, I turned to Mr. Jim Malley of Moraga, CA and said:
“I’m thirsty.”