Many golfers wait a lifetime even to witness another make a hole-in-one, let alone achieve one of their own. However, two players got to do both within moments of each other in a recent event.
Austin Bautista and George Mason were competing in the Mizuno Nex Gen Series on the Clutch Pro Tour at Tandridge Golf Club in England. When the pair reached the 165-yard par 3, PGA Tour of Australasia pro Bautista’s round, which, by his own admission, had been poor for the previous couple of holes, got considerably better. That’s because after selecting an 8-iron, he achieved a hole-in-one.
While that was a remarkable enough turn of events, things were about to get even more strange. Undaunted by the prospect of trying to match that effort, Mason took his shot and, while the ball was in the air, jokingly asked Bautista: “Is there enough room in there for another one?” He didn’t need to wait long for his answer as the ball disappeared from view, with his playing partner assuming it had found the back bunker.
The pair approached the green, and Bautista was initially confused to find Mason’s ball in the hole rather than his own, until he noticed his own ball nestled at the bottom of the hole.
Bautista, who won the PGA Tour of Australasia’s Tailor-Made Building Services NT PGA Championship a year ago, said: “I had just gone bogey-bogey and was furious and stepped up to the tee on number three and hit a shot that looked good, and I was like: ‘Oh, that looks good!’ All of a sudden, it disappears. I thought it could have gone in the back bunker, it made no sense, and it went in.
“Then, all of a sudden, George steps up. Ball’s in the air, and he goes: ‘Is there enough room in there for another one?’ We thought: ‘Oh, one bounce and it went in the bunker,’ because it was only one bounce and it disappeared, and then we get up there, and I look in the hole expecting to get mine, and I see his ball first, and I’m like: ‘Wait, where’s mine?’ And I looked further - both balls are in the hole.”
Not surprisingly, wild celebrations ensued as the realisation that both players had just been part of something that will almost certainly never be repeated in their careers sunk in.
