In the summer of 1965, fifteen year old me was playing at the Riverside Golf Course in my mother's hometown of Janesville, WI. I was relatively new to golf (on my way to a round of 115) when I captured lightning in a bottle with an ace on the fourteenth hole. The ball was an Acushnet XXX. Probably cost me a nickel and you shipped me an ashtray to commemorate the event.

My game has improved appreciably since then, but my record of aces had not! I have lipped out a dozen times, been within a foot a hundred times and jarred at least a half dozen eagles from distance... no luck. I retired to Southwest Florida in 2018 to a country club community with three executive nines. With five or six par threes per nine, I figured the second ace just HAD to be coming, but even then, it took seven more years to be proven correct. September 21st, would have been my mother's 116th birthday. I was playing my usual Sunday game with a friends group when we reached the third hole. It is by far the hardest hole on our courses! It is 202 yards, framed by water in front and right with OB to the left. I am thrilled when I par this hole and have birdied it maybe twice. On this day I was hitting a low stinger 3 wood with no particular hope beyond keeping the ball between the hazards. 200 yards is at the outside limit of my 3 wood range these days, but the shot had plenty of overspin and at 170 yards or so, hit a mound that propelled it back into the air. It came down on the green and kept rolling until it disappeared. My playing partners said it went in, but after sixty years of disappointment, I figured we would find it in the deep Bermuda rough behind the green. Thankfully, they were right!

I am not easily give to tears, but have to admit to shedding a few! Greedy soul that I am, I immediately thought, "Well, I hope I don't have to wait sixty years for the next one." Cheers!