DEFYING ALL THE ODDS
Local golfers get two holes-in-one on same hole
The odds of any golfer hitting a hole-in-one are slim. The odds of two golfers from the same group hitting a hole-in-one on the same hole one after the other are astronomical.
Gerry Hanke and Bruce Baier beat those odds Friday.
Hanke and Baier were originally going to golf at the Willows, but ended up at the Moonlake Golf and Country Club instead.
On the eighth hole of the Heather course at Moonlake, which they said was 128 yards, Hanke pulled out a wedge and aced it.
Baier said a hole-in-one is a tough act to follow. “Do you know how hard it is to go up there after a ball goes in the hole like that and you have to hit next?” he said.
But he stepped up to the tee, took a swing and watched the ball bounce once on the green before rolling into the hole.
“I think I was still cheering (for mine) when Bruce put his in!” Hanke laughed.
After the second hole-in-one, Hanke and Baier said they “went ballistic” with celebration. People from a nearby green and the owner of the golf course heard and saw what happened and actually made it to the green before either Hanke or Baier.
“Nobody could believe there were two balls in the bottom of the cup,” Baier said.
“Everybody came running over ... looking in the cup!”
Baier, who said he wasn’t golfing his best up to that point, said he never thought he’d hit a hole-inone in his life.
“I’ll be 57 this year and I’ve never had one,” Baier added. “But when it went in I just when absolutely berserk.”
According to statistics from the National Hole-In-One Registry, the odds of two golfers from the same foursome hitting holes-inone on the same hole are 17 million to one.