By The Numbers: Pair At Storey Creek Beat Astronomical Odds
During a Men’s Night in May 2021, two golfers in the same group combined for a five-under score with just three swings...
In a very funny post to the Club’s newsletter, Head Professional Steven MacPherson recounts how James Binnersley holed his second shot on the par-5 sixth, only to be followed by partner Steve Schmidt holing his tee shot on the par-3 seventh.
The odds of this happening are hard to even estimate.
The odds of the average amateur getting an ace range from around one-in-5000 for a low-ish handicapper to one-in-12,000 for the average player.
The odds for albatrosses are far hazier.
Over the entire 70-year history of the Masters, there have been only four on a golf course designed for risk-reward “going-for-it-in-two.” Back of the napkin calculations would make that around 1-in-40,000 and that’s for pros. The PGA TOUR keeps these stats and for them, it seems to be around 1-in-70,000 across all the courses they play.
The USGA’s Scott Hovde examined this back in 2015 and said that 99% of amateur golfers can’t even reach a par-5 in two shots. He went on to say, "If we define an amateur golfer as say a 15-20 handicap male (about the average), then the million to 1 odds are not unreasonable."
Looking at this, the odds of seeing an albatross and a hole-in-one on consecutive holes from a foursome of amateurs who are actually good enough to be able to reach a par-4 in one or par-5 in two could be in the order of more than 250 million-to-one.*
Congrats to both of them on what may be an unequalled achievement!
Editor’s Note: I knew a scratch golfer who was a member at Gallagher’s Canyon in Kelowna back in the 80s who double-eagled their 511-yard, par-5, 10th hole twice in the same year using driver, 2-iron. If, for argument’s sake, he played 100 rounds over that season, the odds of this happening would be in the order of 1-in-49 million... for a PGA TOUR professional.
* The odds of one of four players getting an ace is approximately 1:2,000 and the odds of one of four players getting an albatross is 1:100,000.