Talericos come up aces

HUSBAND AND WIFE SCORE HOLE-INONES ON THE SAME DAY AT THE LETHBRIDGE COUNTRY CLUB

When John Talerico found out his wife, Jean, carded a hole-in-one during her round Wednesday morning, there was one thing he was sure of. He had to keep pace. So when Jean went out and aced the seventh hole at the Lethbridge Country Club for her fifth hole-in-one, John knew he had to follow suit in his afternoon round.

Whatever the statistical likelihood of a husband and wife carding a hole-in-one on the same day on the same course, John shrugged off the odds, draining an ace of his own on the 12th hole.

Now, for those keeping track on the Talerico hole-inscoreboard, the score is Jean 5, John 3.

“When I got to the club, one of the ladies had mentioned that Jean had gotten a hole-in-one. She got hers first. My comment was ‘Darn, now I’m three behind.’ So the game was on,” said John.

The opportunities for the hole-in-one presented themselves on the fifth and seventh holes.

“On the first opportunity I had on five I made a birdie,” said John. “On the next hole, the one Jean got hers on, which was hole 7. It rolled past the flag. “And then on 12 it went in.” Teeing off from 188 yards from the blue tees, John brandished his five wood and teed off.

But on the long par-three, John didn’t see where his ball landed.

“At that distance it’s hard to see,” he said. “I hit a good shot, but you don’t know for sure until you get up to the green.”

Fortunately for John, there was a set of eyes ahead of him that saw the shot fall.

“My playing partners who were ahead of me said it was in the hole,” said John. “They didn’t take it out. They waited for me to go to the hole. As I took the ball out they took a picture of me taking the ball out.”

As it turned out, finding witnesses for Jean’s hole-inone also wasn’t an issue.

“She had to go over the sandtrap to get to the pin,” said John. “She hit a hybrid club and the group on the eighth tee box all of a sudden started hollering that it was in the hole. She had a total of seven people witness it.”

But like John, Jean didn’t see her tee shot fall.

“It was a pretty shot. When I hit the ball I knew it had a chance because it was right on line to the pin,” she said. “It disappeared, but we weren’t sure if it had gone past the pin and into the shadows. But the group on the number eight tee box was screaming and hollering that it was in the hole. So of course, we did our celebration. It was fun.”

Jean leads the hole-in-one race by two, but in Wednesday’s round both the husband and wife carded a solid 81.

“It was weird the way everything went into place,” said Jean, adding the husband-wife ace on the same day odds were also discussed with other members post-round.

“It was like everyone else (saying) ‘Are you kidding me? How often does that happen?’” said Jean.