Coming Up Aces

The final item in the "Off the Wires" post down below is about blind golfer Sheila Drummond recording an ace.

Doesn't it seem like there've been an inordinate amount of stories like that this year? Significant or unusual aces. I wonder if that's because more of them have happened, or only because more of them have been reported in the media?

Just looking back through the Waggle Room archives (and WR has been online for only around seven months, maybe eight), I've posted about:

• 
  
• the alleged longest ace ever
  
• "King of Aces" Mancil Davis' 51st career hole-in-one
  
• the ace recorded by 102-year-old Elsie McLean
  
• a 9-year-old believed to be the youngest girl to make an ace
  
• a 5-year-old who made an ace right after he announced he was going to do so (albeit in disc golf!)
  
• two members of the same group recording aces on back-to-back shots
  
• three family members who each made holes-in-one over a three-day period, and, of course,
  
• the California woman who made 10 aces in four months (and later added 3 or 4 more)
  

And those are just the stories I've bothered to mention.

Every time I read one of these stories, I think to myself, "That happened, and I still haven't made one lousy hole-in-one? C'mon!"

The saddest part is, I've even come close just once. Sure, I've stiffed a lot of approach shots, but only once did a ball hit the green and roll toward the cup in a manner that made me certain I was about to make an ace.

Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday (cue harp music and vidoe of clouds to signal flashback) ...

I was on a short par-3 hitting pitching wedge. The ball hit the green to the right and behind the cup, then spun straight back to the hole. It disappeared, I waited a split-second to make sure it didn't reappear, then I started celebrating.

"It's in the hole! It's in the hole!" And I broke out in a jig that, to this day, my playing partners on that hole refer to as "the Mullie shuffle." What can I say, I was young and full of joy.

Alas, the cup was not full of my golf ball. I glanced up and there, glistening in the sun, was my ball, an inch from the cup. What happened? The ball had rolled behind the flagstick, disappearing, and didn't reappear because it came to rest fully in the shadow of the pin. When the wind blew the flagstick and moved its shadow, there the ball sat.

Sigh. Someday I'll break out the "Mullie shuffle" again.

That's my hole-in-one near-miss story. What's yours?