While it’s true that the golf season is still going full force in wide swaths of the country, many of us are facing a stark reality: Winter beckons, and our playing days are down to the few, unless we travel.
But here’s a trip we can take by sitting still. A trip back to a sultry summer day a few months ago when a series of golf shots took place that defy imagination. On a golf hole that is an ode to Pine Valley. At a golf course that was gifted by a man of vision whose spirit still envelopes the landscape.
What occurred on July 23 on the par-3 sixth hole at Boston Golf Club in Hingham, Mass., still resonates with resounding awe because in an age when computers can spit out in the blink of an eye how everything is possible, even GROK, the X.AI platform, was left scratching its computational head.
“This is beyond astronomical – statistically impossible in human golf history, yet golf’s magic is that it could happen,” is how GROK responded to the information provided by a Boston Golf Club member, Dan Cronin.
Ah, Grok, not could happen. It did happen.
What happened? Glad you asked, so here goes.
Three players from a group of eight good friends – playing in back-to-back foursomes – made holes-in-one at BGC’s sixth. That day No. 6 was an especially devilish 142-yard challenge because the hole location was to the left, up in a narrow neck of the green that sits at the end of a wide expanse of waste bunkers. (Though the hole is called Wild Turkey, No. 6 strikes a Pine Valley pose.)
“A magical day,” said BGC National Member Michael Herlihy, who had coordinated this parade of good golfers and better friends. Herlihy, who lives in Connecticut, was in a group with Greg Mattern, Keith Anthony and Don Prohovich.
Behind them, Chris Severance played with three other friends, all of them part of a charity foursome that Herlihy had purchased and donated to support the Easterseals Golf Tournament on Fishers Island.
“I’m always proud to bring guests and no one ever leaves disappointed,” said Herlihy of his BGC visits – and oh, how the July 23 happenings left his guests with the sweetest of all golf memories.
Mattern and Anthony had the honors at six tee and while the right side of the green is relatively inviting, on this day the hole was left, where the narrowness of the green catches your attention.
“The depth of the green is really a one-club green,” explains Gil Hanse, who along with Jim Wagner provided the brilliant BGC design. “So you have to get the depth, the shot, the club properly struck, properly selected to score on this golf hole.”
Emphasis on “properly struck, properly selected” because Mattern pushed all the challenging aspects aside and striped his tee shot. The players and their caddies had a clear view of it taking two hops before falling into the hole. “This was not a hole-in-one that no one saw,” laughed Herlihy. “The great thing about this hole is, you can see it. It was visible; there were witnesses.”
True enough, only the great thing about No. 6 on this day is what came next. Jokingly, Herlihy said he turned to Mattern and said, “Go take that ball out of the hole because I don’t want my shot to go in on the fly and bounce out because your ball’s already there.’ ”
OK, so maybe he didn’t quite “call his shot,” but let’s celebrate the glory of this great game because Herlihy flushed his 9-iron and for a second there was an eerie pall over the tee box. Herlihy’s shot, like Mattern’s, was all over the flagstick. “But we didn’t hear a click, didn’t see a bounce and we wondered, ‘Did it go in?’ ” he said.
When they arrived at the green and discovered that indeed, two balls were in the cup, the euphoria was a testament to the spell golf has on us. “Lots of hugs, big, sweaty hugs,” said Herlihy.
Keith Anthony (left) and Don Prohovich (right) had front-row seats to a feat that defies odds -- holes-in-one by two players in the same foursome (Greg Mattern, second from left, and Michael Herlihy, second from right).
“To make a hole-in-one is amazing and it would be very cool even if no one saw it,” he added. “But to make one and see another in the same group, and to be with friends, and the fact that it was at Boston Golf Club’s sixth hole . . . it makes it all that much more special.”
True, all of that, but as Herlihy, Mattern, Anthony, Prohovich and their caddies walked along the fairway at No. 7, a crescendo of noise erupted from what they figured was the area of six green. Indeed, the wildness and craziness had continued because their friend, Chris Severance, had made the third hole-in-one in less than 15-20 minutes.
News traveled quickly. The young woman working the snack bar at five green / six tee area called ahead to tell the clubhouse that not one, but two hole-in-ones had been made at No. 6. “About 10 minutes later she had to call in to say there had been a third,” laughed Herlihy.
If it was difficult to believe, that’s understandable. Even GROK, when fed the details by Cronin – holes-in-one by three of eight players in back-to-back foursomes – used its vast language aptitude to show it understood the magnitude of this accomplishment.
“If it does (happen),” GROK wrote in response to Cronin’s message, “buy the clubhouse drinks for life; you’d own the legend.”
It turns out that the legend grew deeper because another golfer several groups after Severance and friends made a hole-in-one at BGC’s par-3 eighth hole.
Curious as to what sort of incomparable golf had taken place at BGC, Cronin fed more data to GROK and the AI chatbot digested all of it – the aces by three friends in back-to-back groups at the devilish No. 6 and the one later at the eighth (four aces on a day when 88 rounds were played).
The odds, as Cronin presumed, were astronomical. According to GROK, “Approximately 1 in 65 billion.”
For good measure GROK provided the formula, which means very little to someone who still grapples with dangling participles and subjunctive pronouns, but good gracious does it look cool: (6.5 x 10^{10}).
Though in awe of GROK’s computations, the golf brilliance performed by Herlihy and Mattern and Severance is admired by yours truly in another light. That is, it was the sort of joy and camaraderie that John Mineck envisioned when he led the mission to build BGC.
He was pure joy, John was, a renaissance man who envisioned his golf course to be in the mold of what he himself was – a minimalist with a profound appreciation for creativity and artistry. BGC would connect with your inner soul! That was John’s wish and though he tragically died in 2007, less than two years after the golf course was opened, every time my ears hear a story of golfers savoring great joy at BGC, my eyes look up and an approving nod is shared with a mentor without peer.
My heart led me to write these words about John 18 years ago: “Some people touch your lives. Then there are those rare ones who shape them and mold them into something better than you ever could have imagined.”
That sentiment remains unaltered. And the joyous story of those wild aces and an unfathomable golf feat by Michael Herlihy, Greg Mattern and Chris Severance? It proves that John Mineck’s vision for BGC is similarly intact. So good, all of it.
