Double eagle lands at Scotsdale
David Jensen has been playing golf for 51 years, but this is probably his best year. First, there was the hole in one and then something even more unusual.
On Dec. 20, he was playing Scotsdale as part of a foursome. On hole three, a par-five hole, he used a new driver and sent his ball far down the fairway. He had to wait for the rest of the foursome to catch up — taking three or four shots each to reach the green. Meanwhile, he took his second swing. At least one member of the foursome, scooped up his ball and settled for an eight — the highest score allowed by his handicap.
When Jansen got to the green, the first thing he saw was a divot where a ball had struck with enough force to disturb the grass. As he reached down to repair the divot, he realized where his ball must be. It was in the hole.
“I didn’t understand the gravity of it at first,” he recalls about his 3-under par hole. So he went home and Googled it.
“There are only about 200 a year,” he explained about his double eagle.
A double eagle, he explained, is when a player finishes a hole three strokes under par. It can be either two strokes on a par-five hole or a hole-in-one on par-four hole. Outside the United States, it’s called an albatross.
As a story on the USA Today website points out, the term “double eagle” doesn’t add up.
“A birdie is universally known as a score of 1-under par on a hole,” according to www.usa today.com. “An eagle is 2-under par. Double that — a double eagle — and it would be 4-under par.”
“It’s something that 99.9 percent of people never get to see,” Larry Schlueter said. He was one of Jensen’s witnesses and a member of the foursome that played that day.
“I wasn’t surprised that he got on the green,” another member of the foursome, Curtis Howell said. He’s seen Jensen reach the green in two shots on other par-five holes. But other times it took a third stroke to get in the hole.
A story on the website, www. pga.com, says the odds of getting a double eagle are either six million to one — if you believe longtime Golf World writer Bill Fields — or a million-to-one, according to Dean Knuth, a Golf
Digest contributing editor. The odds of achieving a hole in one are 12,000 to one, the same story said, citing the National Hole-in-One Registry.
Jansen had an explanation of why a double eagle is much rarer than a hole in one. A par-five hole is always a long hole and many golfers can’t get close enough to the green to reach the hole with a second shot. To have the chance at a double eagle, you have to have the power to hit a long shot with some accuracy.
Golf operations director Phillip Wright said he didn’t know of any other double eagles on the six Bella Vista courses, but he figures there have been some. There’s a lot of golf played in Bella Vista.
A story in the Vista in April 2013, recounts a double eagle hit by a 17-year-old golfer on Kingswood during an annual All in The Family Tournament. The young golfer and his family were surprised when they went around the corner of a dogleg hole and saw another foursome on the green. They feared he had hit another golfer, but the other foursome was admiring a ball in the hole. Everyone was surprised to hear that the young golfer’s shot had gone in.
“It is rare. It’s rarer than a hole in one,” Wright said, but he thinks there’s an element of luck in both feats. After all, he said, pro golfers don’t get many double eagles and they are the best golfers, just not the luckiest.
Jensen doesn’t want praise for his double eagle, but he’s happy to use it to get some publicity for Bella Vista golf courses, especially the recently renovated Scotsdale course. People should know when something this big happens in their town.