STARKVILLE – With how much golf he plays each week, Starkville resident Lewis Brown said it was bound to happen sooner or later, and despite the rarity of the feat, the 65-year-old lifelong golfer wasn’t really surprised on Monday when he knocked in his second hole-in-one in the span of three weeks.
He was playing with some friends in a four-man scramble on the course of the Links in Starkville and was the first one to tee off on the par-3 No. 6 hole. The distance to the hole was about 117 yards, so he opted for a 9-iron and stepped up and knocked it home in one stroke.
“I said, ‘Hmm. I probably ought to hit my 9 (iron) instead of my wedge,’ and I’m glad I did,” he said. “… I got up and knocked in the hole and got up and high-fived everybody.”
The ace was his first in 48 years since he hit his first-ever hole-in-one, which was also his first ever birdie, when he was 15, but now as a man who golfs around three times a week, he just knew it wasn’t his last time doing it.
“It was a long time coming” he said. “There’s a group I play with on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Say there’s six of us out there, there are three holes you can get a hole-in-one on, so if the six of us are playing and you have to play the same nine holes twice, we each have three chances on each nine (holes). We have 36 chances every single day for one of us in the group to get a hole-in-one.”
But on Monday at the same course, he found himself once again pulling the ball out of the hole after one stroke and posing for a photo. This time it was on the par-3 hole of No. 15 and with a pitching wedge. He teed off a little ways further back to avoid the active sprinkler system and lofted the ball right onto the green.
“They both just landed about four or five feet in front of the hole and rolled into the hole like a putt,” Brown said. “… We didn’t even high-five each other. One of them just said, ‘He did it again,’ and the other guy wasn’t even watching.”
He made sure this time to keep the scorecards and the balls as a memento, something he didn’t do when he made his first-ever ace 48 years ago at the Starkville Country Club. He was talked into giving his card and ball to the company.
“I didn’t copy (the card) because I was a kid, you know,” he said.
Now he’s got proof that he can hang onto forever, and he’s looking to add to a few more before he’s done golfing.
“I might try to get one every month now that I know how to do it,” Brown said with a laugh,
Sitting in rarefied air, he also had some advice to those who wish to notch a hole-in-one themselves.
“Take the club straight back and follow through,” he said.
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