Some golfers will go their entire life without ever hitting a hole-in-one. Others have one or two, and they remember those shots like the births of their children.
But two aces in the same round?
That’s a feat estimated at one-in-67 million, that only some 200 golfers have ever accomplished.
Kuni Ikeda pulled it off on Saturday at the Meadow Gardens Golf Club in Pitt Meadows.
The Richmond resident had never hit an ace before, in more than 20 years of golfing. But at the 102-yard, par three fourth hole, she put a good swing on the ball with her pitching wedge.
“It was a nice hit – I was so comfortable,” she said, and she watched as the ball landed about five feet from the hole, and then rolled in. She reacted like a lottery winner.
“We were jumping up and down on the greens.”
The next one came on the par three seventh hole, which is 129 yards. She hit her number four rescue iron, and looking into the sun lost sight of her ball.
The hole is surrounded by a water hazard, and when the ball wasn’t visible, Ikeda started looking in the water for it, then they looked in the rough. They finally found it in the last place they looked – in the hole.
This time her reaction was more stunned: “Really? Are you kidding,” she laughed. “It’s unbelievable. Amazing.”
She was the talk of the course all weekend, and into Monday, when a Vancouver-based television news team took her out onto the course to tell her story.
“In the history of golf, this has rarely happened,” said Hanna Brychkouskaya, operations manager at Meadow Gardens. “It’s amazing news.”
There were three witnesses, as part of her foursome in the Ladies Club Summer Open.
Brychkouskaya said the club tradition is that everyone who gets an ace gets their name on a plaque, as well as a keeper trophy. She is not sure how to commemorate Ikeda’s feat, except “it has to be something special.”
The 69-year-old, has been a member at Meadow Gardens for going on four years, since retiring from her career with a lumber company, and now plays a round almost every day. She is a 19 handicap golfer.
“I do it for exercise – for my health, and not as much for competition.”
But she has accomplished something that has only been done once in a PGA tour event – by Yusaku Miyazato in 2006.
“I can’t believe it – it’s so shocking.”
