Golfers Score Back-To-Back Hole-In-Ones

NEWARK, N.J. -- Two swings, two aces -- two balls in the same cup.

Moments after Thomas Brady scored a hole-in-one, Dennis Gerhart stepped to the tee and matched it at Forsgate Country Club in Monroe Township.

‘I’ve never heard of that happening anywhere in the world,’ Jim Woods, director of golf at the club said Thursday, a day after the dual aces were recorded on the club’s Banks Course. ‘Two balls on the same hole in the same group is pretty impressive.’

Neither Brady nor Gerhart had ever made a hole-in-one before. The odds of a golfer scoring an ace are about 5,000-to-1. But the odds of two players in a foursome doing it are 17 million to 1, according to a Golf Digest article in 2000.

‘To have two happen like that, back to back, is just unbelievable,’ Brady said Thursday.

Brady, 41, of Lopatcong, used a 6-iron on the 179-yard seventh hole, a downhill par-3. It hit the green and rolled about 30 feet into the hole.

‘Everybody was just high-fiving each other,’ Gerhart said.

Gerhart, 57, an electrical contractor from Point Pleasant, then made his ace with a 5-iron after hitting to about 20 feet. ‘It landed on the green and started trickling toward the pin. I thought it was going to stop short, but it kept rolling,’ he said.

‘His ball hit in almost the same spot on the left side of the green and rolled to the hole,’ Brady said.

The group could not be sure the ball wasn’t behind the pin until they drove up to the hole, he said.

‘It was just utterly incredible,’ Gerhart said. ‘I’m just ecstatic when I stick the green and get a shot at par.’

The U.S. Golf Association and the World Golf Hall of Fame had no immediate information on the frequency of back-to-back aces.

Gerhart described himself as a ‘weekend hacker’ who plays 15 times a year. The ace contributed to a personal best score of 84. Brady, a skilled player with a 9.5 handicap, had a 79 on the par-71 layout, but even the pros find holes-in-one to be elusive.

In June, Bruce Vaughn, a player on the Champions Tour, had two aces in two days this June, each on different holes at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, N.Y.

Yusaku Miyazato recorded two holes-in-one during the same round at the Reno-Tahoe Open in 2006 in Nevada, which is believed to be only the second time that feat was ever done on the PGA TOUR.

Gerhart and Brady said they would save the scorecard and the balls. The foursome also included Thomas White, of Brick Township, and James Sydlo, of Edison.

The back-to-back aces were first reported in The Star-Ledger of Newark.

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