It’s difficult to find anything Tiger Woods hasn’t done on a golf course, but Jake Allman managed to do something that has eluded the golf great's score card for his entire career.
The Burlington resident hit an albatross – three under par – on a 496-yard par 5, the first hole at Copetown Woods Golf Club, on April 27 while playing a round with his dad Joel. After his tee shot, he sat approximately 220 yards from the hole and pulled out a 4 hybrid.
“I line up my ball, I know the pin is at the back of the green,” Jake said. “I’m envisioning my shot, aim to the right and hope to fade the ball just toward the pin. I swing, and it’s exactly how I imagined it.”
The odds of hitting an albatross on a par 5 are – on a good day – a million to one and can be as high as six million to one. The odds of sinking a hole-in-one on a par 3 seem comparatively easy at 12,500 to one for amateur players.
Jake and Joel looked for the ball for a few minutes, as Joel joked that it could be in the hole.
Not really expecting find it, Jake checked in the hole. Sure enough it was there, and he turned around with a big grin on his face.
“I was in shock,” he said. “I told my dad when you golf, you go for holes-in-ones, eagles, and birdies. I’d never thought in a million years an albatross would be in the question for my level of game.”
The two started golfing together when Jake was nine years old, but he didn’t catch the bug until he was home from college. They went into Golf Town together, picked up a set of Cobra King F6 clubs, and have hit the links as regularly as they can for nine years now.
“I was so happy for him,” Joel said. “It’s such an incredible achievement, a combination of skill and luck. I’ve never had a hole-in-one, or an albatross. But we have had a situation where we both eagled the same hole.”
The luck factor was high on Joel's radar that day, as he had his girlfriend draw some designs on his Kirkland golf balls before the round. She drew a bumblebee, a bomb and a cherry.
As the cherry was his favourite, Jake picked that one out of his bag first and put in on his tee for the first hole.
“I’m never going to play with it ever again,” he said. “I’m sticking that thing in a frame and it’s going to stay there.”
The father and son had two more friends lined up to play with them, but both cancelled at the last minute due to weather and a scheduling mix-up. Joel has a saying: it never rains on the golf course. Although it was spitting a bit as the two arrived, the clouds parted just as the ball went in the first hole.
Both of them added if there were two more players on the course, Jake likely wouldn’t have made the albatross in the first place.
“I told them thanks for not coming,” Jake said.
