tool name

Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2009

James Burns: Short drives, long, long odds

There are golfers like me.

In the thick cabbage. In the sand. On a root. On the opposite fairway, piling up strokes faster than Michael Phelps.

And then there are golfers like Dino Bianchi.

In the fairway -- his fairway. On the green. Flying with birdies and eagles. Not awesomely long off the tee, but damn if he doesn't hit it on a line every single time.

Bianchi is 76, and in the twilight of his life.

I'm 29 today, not yet at life's turn, by definition younger and more vibrant than any septuagenarian.

Bianchi has five career hole-in-ones.

Me ...

Well, I've got none.

Just as a $1,000 club or fancy spikes don't make the golfer, aces are hardly the measure of one's ability to bang it around the links. You can have a swing uglier than that of Sir Charles and still get lucky once. On the flipside, you can have a really, really low handicap and go a lifetime without coming close.

That said, the ace remains the toughest individual accomplishment in sports.

Bar none.

World record sprints or swims? Puh-leeze. Too predictable, thanks to freakishly gifted athletes like Usain Bolt and Phelps, and slip-stream suits.

Hitting for the cycle or the triple play? Still really, really rare, but c'mon, it's baseball. How can we believe anything we see?

The hole-in-one can't be faked, prescribed or doctored up.

Even the pros struggle:

According to Golf Digest, the odds of a touring pro kissing the bottom of the cup on one shot: 3,000 to 1.

An average player, like Bianchi: 5,000 to 1.

A hacker like myself: 12,000 to 1.

"It's a special occasion when it happens," Merced Golf and Country Club first assistant Jake Morgner said. "But it's not easy. The word 'easy' doesn't fit.

"There are some really, really good golfers out there, guys that have been playing all their lives, that will never get one.

"And that's sad."

It's a blend of skill and luck, so perfectly mixed no one knows which comes first: Is it skill or luck?

With the confidence of five hole-in-ones and a tight game from the gold tees, Bianchi says skill.

Proudly.

"The biggest thing I've been able to do is hit it straight," he said. "If you can hit it straight, you're giving yourself an opportunity."

Bill Schertz says luck.

Schertz's only ace survived a brush with a tree, took a fortunate bounce onto the 17th green at Rancho Del Rey, and then stumbled into the cup as if it were drunk.

"I thought it was going to hit the limb," the retired fireman said. "I was lucky to even get it on the green.

"I figured if I ever got one, I'd have a heart attack and die. Fortunately, that didn't happen."

But it doesn't have to be impossible.

Statistically and theoretically, there is hope -- a road map for those chasing perfection on par-3s in the county.

If half the battle is putting yourself in that moment, in that tee box, here is a list of the area's "easiest" holes to ace, starting with the Stevinson Ranch Golf Club:

For a limited time only, if you buy a club membership, you get two hole-in-ones.

OK, not really, but the links-style course is home to the most documented aces in the past two years.

Sixty!

Nos. 12 and 4 should leave you seeing green. The two holes have produced 43 hole-in-ones since January 2008, including two within a span of four days earlier this month.

Break out a wedge or a short iron on No. 12 (24 aces), where the cup is a 109-yard swing away from the white tees. The green is relatively flat, eliminating some of the guesswork.

No. 4 (19) is a longer drive, but obviously doable at 138 yards. Just don't let the water hazard that stretches from tee box to green make you jumpy.

Santa Nella's Forebay Golf Course hasn't yielded many aces in the past two years, "maybe three of four," said general manager Diana Bush.

But Nos. 3 (172 yards) and 6 (182) are enticing.

"Even I've reached the green in one," Bush said.

The Merced Golf and Country Club doesn't keep official records of this kind of stuff, but Morgner guesstimates that 75 percent of all aces have come on 17.

"It's our shortest hole," said Morgner, 26, who has aced the 135-yard hole three times in his career.

"Whenever it's the shortest, it's the easiest."

Not so at Rancho Del Rey, where holes 8 and 17 are the most commonly aced on the course, Schertz said.

From the red (women) and gold (senior) tees, both holes play considerably longer.

Bianchi has two there.

"It's a matter of distance, age and everything else," Bianchi said, fresh off the course, before replaying the "when and how" of his five career aces.

Whatever, Dino. Now you're just showing off.

James Burns is sports editor of the Sun-Star. He can be reached at jburns@mercedsun-star.com.