Crim: Obert’s feat of aces in back-to-back rounds defies golf’s already long odds

QUINCY — Tom Obert continues to defy the odds on the golf course.

The 66-year-old Quincy man scored holes-in-one in back-to-back rounds May 8 and 10 at Westview Golf Course and narrowly missed a third a day later. They were the sixth and seventh aces he has recorded in the last dozen years, which, in itself, puts him in select company.

“To get one is lucky, but to get one two days in a row is crazy,” he admitted. “The only thing I don’t like about the (unwritten) rules of golf is the one who gets the hole-in-one has to buy. We have a few guys who like to partake in cocktails.”

To put Obert’s feats into perspective, the odds of an average golfer making a hole-in-one are 12,500 to 1, according to the National Hole-in-One Registry.

The Registry notes there are 450 million rounds of golf played each year in the U.S. and each course reports an average of between 10 to 15 aces annually. Basically, that means a hole-in-one is scored in every 3,500 rounds.

Moreover, only 1 to 2% of golfers score an ace each year, and only 9% of all golfers have made three or more aces. And, according to Golf Digest, there is a 5.7 million-to-1 chance for an amateur to make a hole-in-one two days in a row.

“Any hole-in-one is just luck,” said Obert, who carries of handicap of between 5 and 6 and generally scores in the 70s on the par-71 Westview tract. “When you hit a good shot, you never think it is going in. To put a ball in a hole that small is crazy.”

Obert is among a group of players who tee it up at noon every Tuesday and Wednesday at Westview, and at 9 a.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, weather permitting. 

He said all are between 65 and 70 years old and retired. The group usually consists of around 10 players during the week and up to 20 on weekends.

Two years ago, the group gained some notoriety when four different players, including Obert, scored aces in a single year at Westview. Three of those came during a mind-boggling 12-day stretch in late July and early August.

The group’s hole-in-one drought ended this month.

Obert’s first ace came with an 8-iron from 125 yards on the downhill ninth hole on a blustery Sunday afternoon.

“It was a blue pin (on the back of the green) and windier than heck,” he said. “We could see it going toward the hole. We didn’t see it go in, but I thought I heard a click. Sure enough when we got down there it was in the cup.”

Two days later, standing at about the same yardage with the same club on the par-3 15^th hole under considerably milder weather conditions, his tee shot landed 10 feet short of the pin and gently rolled in.

“Nobody cut me on the greenies,” Obert said with a laugh. “Won a skin, too.”

The following day, on the par-3 11^th hole, his tee shot ran just past the cup, barely missing what would have been a third ace in as many rounds, which would have been off the charts.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God,’ ” Obert said of watching the ball track toward the cup. “I might never had heard the end of it. When you get hot, you get hot, I guess.”

Obert said his father, Virgil, helped build Cedar Crest Country Club and he played golf growing up. However, he said he transitioned to fast-pitch softball in his 20s and concentrated on that sport until retiring from a career in construction in his mid-50s.

It was then that he decided to return to golf on a regular basis and tend to his rental properties. He has since enjoyed the kind of hole-in-one success most golfers cannot imagine.

He has the bar tabs to prove it.

“The camaraderie is more important than the golf,” Obert said. “We’re lucky to have enough guys to play. I don’t know what I would do if we didn’t have our little games, the greenies. It’s fun.”

And the odds be damned.