Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that professional golfer Lee Ann Walker self-reported an infraction pointed out to her by her playing her partner’s caddie that cost her a total of 58 penalty strokes over the course of two rounds at the Senior LPGA Championship.
I reference this to drive home the fact that golf, at its basest level, works on the honor system. Any golfer worth their salt will report an infraction or violation they knowingly break and will honestly count their strokes on each hole.
I say all this because the story I’m about to tell will immediately sound made up. But after talking with a number of people, including the player herself, I am confident in reporting the following story: Brooke Barron, a sophomore at Mercy-Burlingame, aced the No. 8 hole at The Olympic Club Lake Course Oct. 4.
Not once. Twice. And just to up the incredible factor, she did it on back-to-back swings.
I asked Barron, point blank:
“Are you lying?”
“No!” Barron responded, earnestly. “I could not believe it at all. … I took a picture.”
After holing out on her initial tee shot, because she was just playing a practice round, she went ahead and teed off again. This time she heard the ball clank off the flag stick.
She walked up to the elevated green and began searching for her balls.
“I thought [the first one] might have gone over (the green) and into the sand trap,” Barron said.
Nope. Not in the bunker. And by the way, where is that second ball?
Barron finally looked into the cup and saw a stunning sight: both balls, nestled side by side, with the pin between them.
One hole, two strokes — back to back — and two hole-in-ones.
The eighth hole on the Lake Course at The Olympic Club is a par-3, ranging from 115 to 200 yards. “(It) is well guarded by cypress trees and two deep bunkers in the front left and right of the green. The green is one of the longer ones on the course and slopes back to front and has a false front which may cause your ball to roll off the green and down 20 to 30 yards short of the green,” as described by The Olympic Club website.
I called the pro shop at The Olympic Club and asked if anyone there had heard about Barron’s accomplishment.
“Oh yeah, Brooke,” said Brandon Kelly, assistant golf shop attendant, who added he had never heard of something like that happening before.
“She can’t see it if it went in (from the tee box because of the elevated green). She hit another ball,” Kelly continued.
A hole-in-one, in and of itself, is quite the accomplishment. It puts her in rarified air of shooting two hole-in-ones in her career, with her first ace coming just over a year ago during a Mercy-Burlingame West Bay Athletic League match at Baylands Golf Links in Palo Alto.
But Barron, who is a member of The Olympic Club junior golf team, entered an even more exclusive club, one where she may be the only member.
At the same time Barron was making her discovery, her father, Tony, was in a golf cart, driving down the cart path, on his way to picking up his daughter to go home. As he approached the eighth hole, he got a text from Brooke, and looked up to see her on the green, waving her hands to get his attention.
“It’s like of those old fishing stories,” Tony Barron said. “As I’m driving down to the hole … she just had this stunned look. She looked like she saw a ghost.”
The Barrons immediately went to the clubhouse to report the feat. They said they were asked to see her scorecard and the clubhouse staff informed her she had to play the ninth hole to make the ace official.
The ninth hole at the Olympic Club, unlike a lot of golf courses, actually plays away from the clubhouse, instead of toward it. So many players finish up a nine-hole round at the eighth, as it finishes at the clubhouse.
“They advised us to go out and play the ninth hole,” Tony Barron said.
“She did go back to finish,” Kelly said.
The biggest issue is that Brooke Barron was playing a practice round. Alone. Without any witnesses. And that’s where the part about golf and the honor system comes into play. If she is a competitive golfer, which she is, and she said she did it, I believe her.
“Probably if it was anyone else in the world (I might question it),” said John Fraher, Mercy-Burlingame golf coach. “Brooke is the most honest person I’ve ever met.”
Brooke Barron is now in line to receive a plaque from The Olympic Club, commemorating her hole-in-one. There was talk about making a custom plaque to indicate her unique achievement, but it was finally deemed to be only one hole-in-one because, in theory, you can not ace the same hole twice.
But it still makes for one helluva golf story.
“To be on the [same] hole, (and ace it) on consecutive shots? That’s pretty incredible,” Kelly said.
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/sports/local/golf-s-honor-code-at-work/article_c6f4aaa6-f09e-11e9-a36e-136936669b95.html
2019-10-17 11:30:00Z
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