Sam Snead's Golf Course Hole-In-One

By C. MacDonald

The famous AT&T Pebble Beach Golf Tournament takes place each February and the goal of many players is to score a hole-in-one. Hole-in-Ones are very difficult to achieve. Some pro golfers have had successful careers, yet never scored a hole-in-one. It's not just skill but a lot of luck that enables it to happen.

I've played in a lot of golf tourneys and never had a hole-in-one, although I've come as close as the tip of my little finger from having the ball drop in. My sister scored a hole-in-one at Almaden Country Club, which used to be on the PGA and LPGA Pro Tours.

My father was a superb, tournament-winning golfer, who had fun playing rounds with Carl Hubbell, Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher, and Jack Christiansen, Hall of Fame NFL Football Player and coach of the San Francisco 49ers. He also often played regularly with Bob Fontaine, General Manager of the San Diego Padres. Yet, in spite of his incredible skills and scores, he never scored an "ace," until one day when he played with me at Tecolote Canyon Golf Course in San Diego (a course designed by Robert Trent Jones and Sam Snead, who happened to be the first winner of what became the AT&T Pebble Beach, when Bing Crosby started it at the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club in San Diego County 80 years ago!)

You never really know when--or if--you'll get a hole-in-one. I'm still waiting for mine, even though my foursome played mighty fine golf and once won a tournament at difficult Torrey Pines South, the year it became the site of the pro golf's U.S. Open.

As a youth, my father patiently taught me how to play golf--the skills, the techniques and the psychology needed to win. When I lived in San Diego, he came down to aggressively challenge the courses with his textbook swing and well-grooved skills. My self-taught father really had a knack for hitting that little white cylinder accurately and could chip it in from the fairway, a sandtrap or at least put the ball next to the pin. It was like he had a sixth sense.

In 1974, 10 years after Sam Snead created the beautiful, winding Tecolote Canyon course, I stood with my dad on the first tee. He launched his iron shot at the somewhat disguised target, more than 100 yards away. "It's too far right," he exclaimed in a self-criticism that I had heard before.

The ball bounced two feet to the left of the pin, then "squirreled," as if on cue, into the cup on the first green or so I thought. There was no reaction from my dad. As we walked up to the green, sure enough, the ball was in the hole. Still no reaction from pop. Most people scream, jump up and down or pump their fist in the air when they score that elusive "ace." Not my father.

"Put down a 1," is all he said, as I wrote the scores on the card. As I looked back at him, I caught a gleam in the master of psychology's eyes--a gleam which told me that I was in for one tough match that day. His reaction was just like Sam Sneads. In golf, it's all about the competition. You're only as good as your next shot. For real champions, it's how you play the game.

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