I was visiting one of my best high school friends, Ron, up in New York City for a concert that night at Barclay Center: Chance the Rapper's 10 year anniversary of his Acid Rap mixtape. Ron and I both got into golf shortly after high school, but took a hiatus through college and both got back into golf a within the last 2 years. Since the concert was at night we decided to get out of the city during the day and play a round of golf. I let him pick the course as I had no knowledge of NY golf outside of knowing Bethpage in (on? I don't know) Long Island. He picked this course he played at pretty frequently, Forest Park Golf Course in Queens, and two of his friends from the city wound up joining us as well. Ron mentioned a few times that he played a round with a college friend there last year and that college friend hit a hole in one during the round on hole 6 by accidentally hitting a tree and then miraculously found its way to the pin and dropped in.
We played the first few holes and all of us were very hot and cold. A few bogeys and pars here and there but more bogeys than pars. I shot an 8 on hole 5 after taking a drop by hitting a tee shot out of bounds and having to play catchup after. So I approach hole 6 in a "it can't get worse than that" mindset. As we approach the tee box, we see that the tee box is actually under construction, and the course had a turf mat to hit off of in its place. I look at Ron and go "I f***ing hate mats. This sucks. It's August, why are we hitting off of a mat right now". It was 121 yards to the pin, but we were standing above the green, so my number was closer to 95-98. My stock 50 degree shot is around 110, so I figure I could hit my 56 degree sand wedge a touch harder than normal especially with the forgiveness of a mat.
Since I shot an 8 on the hole before, I was the last to tee off. Ron hit one over the green, his two buddies shank one into the woods and another to the left of the green. I get up to the box and try to silence all the negative thoughts running in my head of "don't max this hole too", "dont let the mat affect you", so on and so forth. I hit the shot and it felt pretty flush coming off the club face. Ron's buddy Kaegan, at the apex of the ball flight, says "oh that looks good". The ball drops, and makes first impact with the green about 4ft in front of the pin. Kaegan then says "Oh that looks really good", and almost as if it happened in slow motion, we see the ball take another bounce, and one smaller bounce after, and disappear into the bottom of the cup. We all go ballistic. I'm jumping for joy, screaming, hugging all of them, making a scene. The foursome on the hole 5 fairway saw the whole thing, they start screaming, clapping, congratulating. I go down to the green, walk up to the cup, and yup, there it was, my ball in the cup.
I bought all the boys beers the next few times the cart girl came around, bought a few pieces of merch in the pro shop, had them sign the card, and ended up shooting about 10 shots above my normal by the end of the round. Ron actually beat me, marking the first time that had ever happened. But none of that mattered, as I had the ultimate highlight of the day of being able to cross off a lifetime bucket list moment before anyone else I know. Almost more impressive than my feat is the fact that Ron has seen two hole in ones on that course, and on that specific hole. If the odds of an amateur golfer hitting a hole in one are 1 in 12.5K, then the odds of seeing two amateur golfers hit two hole in ones is 1 in 156M. Moral of the story: play more golf with Ron at Forest Park Golf Course :)