You would surmise as much, but Kevin Gately can confirm from personal experience that making 10 birdies in a round “was a blast.”

Again, that’s 10 birdies in a round. Not in a season, folks, although quite honestly even that is beyond most of our realities. We’re talking 10 birdies in five hours of pure exhilaration, a morning of rareness in Rhode Island (“We got lucky; we didn’t have much wind,” said Gately) and just one of those days you dream about when everything goes right.

OK, not everything, because Gately and his teammate, Sam Jenkins, combined to bogey the 198-yard, par-3 third at Newport National Golf Club. “But that didn’t really bother us because we had birdied the first and Sam made a great birdie at the second (a beefy, 440-yard, par 4),” said Gately.

Just to make sure the memories of that third-hole bogey were wiped clean, Gately and Jenkins birdied all but five of the next 15 holes, including each of the last seven in as emphatic a performance as a team can have in a four-ball test. Shooting 11-under 61, Gately and Jenkins (who chipped in with a pair of birdies), just a pair of golf-happy guys from Pembroke and Hingham, respectively, breezed through a qualifier and will play next spring in their second straight U.S. Amateur Four-ball Championship.

“Last year we shot 5-under and were lucky to get through the qualifier,” said Gately. “But we were just finding out how to play as a team.”

In May at Chambers Bay outside of Tacoma, Wash., Gately and Jenkins shot 72-65 in the national four-ball event and finished just two strokes out of a playoff to secure one of 32 spots into match play. They’ll get another shot at this wildly popular championship next May at the Country Club of Birmingham (Ala.)

Spirited stuff for a couple of guys whose partnership was galvanized through their day job as caddies at Boston Golf Club in Hingham. (Note to those who entrust their golf bags to Gately and Jenkins: Listen to them.)

Though their backgrounds differ in golf – Gately played at St. Thomas Aquinas, gave pro golf a shot for a few years, and got his amateur status back in late 2019; Jenkins played club golf at Elon “but in his last two years he got really, really good,” said Gately – they are unified in their passion for the game.

When he’s not working at Boston Golf Club, Gately is usually at the Harmon Club in Rockland where he’s been a member for years, or playing Pembroke CC. Clearly, all the time has paid off, because Gately finished tied for second earlier this summer in the Ouimet Memorial and he shot 73-73 at Brae Burn CC to finish T-19 in the Massachusetts Amateur, then lost in Round 1 to Matt Parziale.

As for Jenkins, he’s an analyst for DraftKings (he might be able to tell you what the odds were for Gately making birdie on 10 of 18 holes, including six in a row) and recently moved to Charlotte.

Little warmer down there, Gately noted, then he added that Jenkins had recently shot 65-71 to finished joint second in the Charlotte City Amateur. There was a scent of glee in his voice. Teammates are like that.