Back-to-back holes-in-one on a par 4?! This father and son accomplished the unthinkable with a ‘one-in-six-trillion’ moment of madness.
At first, they were told it was a 17-million-to-one moment. Then, a quant investor crunched the numbers, deeming it to be one-in-six-trillion.
Playing in the same foursome, Jim Rohrstaff, 46, and his son Blake, 18, each aced the 280-yard, par-4 eighth hole at Cullen Links in Scotland on July 12. According to Haggin Oaks, the odds for the average golfer making a hole-in-one on a par 3 are approximately 12,500-to-1 and 2,500-to-1 for professionals. The odds of a father and son doing that consecutively on a par 4? Practically unheard of.
“Who knows what it actually is,” Jim said of the odds, “but it’s pretty insane, that’s for sure.”
As a frame of reference, only one player has a hole-in-one on a par 4 in PGA Tour history: Andrew Magee in 2001 – and even that shot famously ricocheted off another player’s putter before finding the cup.
Alongside his wife, Kara, Jim planned a nine-day, six-course golf trip for Blake and their younger son, Eric, to experience Scotland. (The Rohrstaffs live in New Zealand, where Jim has been the director at Tara Iti Golf Club Limited since 2014 and the managing director at Te Arai Links since 2018.) Over the past several years, Jim said he and Kara have played in the Callaway Links Challenge at St Andrews.
Though they weren’t participating in the event this year, they wanted to return to Scotland with their boys and play courses they’d never played. This led to Jim and Kara planning a trip to also play Crail Golf Club, Cruden Bay, Nairn Golf Club, Castle Stuart and Royal Dornoch. As the trip was planned, Cullen was located in the middle of the courses, prompting them to add it to their itinerary.
After Jim and Blake – who are 3 and 4-handicappers, respectively – both notched double-bogeys on the seventh hole, Jim had the honour at the eighth. As they walked up the steps to the tee, Jim brought a driver and 3-wood, while Blake had just a driver. A quick jab from his son was the best advice Jim could’ve received before hitting the first tee shot.
“He gave me grief about, basically, ‘You need driver, old man. You can’t hit 3-wood that far,’” Jim recalled.
So, Jim took his son’s advice and hit his driver. He remembers his ball landing just left of the green and kicking right. The group thought the ball was good, probably just to the left of the small green, so they stopped watching before Blake stepped up to the tee.
After advising his father, Blake stepped up to the tee confidently, announcing he was about to hit a low bullet.
“I accidentally actually did that,” Blake said, “and it landed kind of on the left front of the green and skipped and rolled over to the back slope. There was a backstop behind the green and we kind of saw it coming back, but then from that far, we were just like, ‘Yeah, that’ll be good. Whatever.’”
Without knowing both of their shots ended up in the hole, they watched Kara and Eric hit their tee shots before trying to find their balls. As Jim and Blake looked for Jim’s ball on the left in the rough, Eric walked to the back of the green to search for Blake’s.
As Eric – who is newer to golf – did that, he walked by the hole before providing the best news his older brother and father could’ve imagined: “There’s two balls in here.”
“We’re like, ‘What?’” Jim said. “I go over there and I look down and I mean, my eyes must have been the size of a dinner plate. I mean, I just, I couldn’t believe it.”
Jim excitedly exclaimed, “Blake, it’s in the hole!”
But Blake, who’s studying at university in Melbourne and plays his golf on the Sandbelt, didn’t yet comprehend the situation, asking whose ball was in the hole. Once Jim responded that it was both, euphoria set in.
“We just lost our s–t, and we went nuts!” adds Jim. “Literally, I was shaking for five minutes. We just hopped around like idiots.
“When the jumping finally stopped, I phoned the golf shop. The lady who answered was in the clubhouse and couldn’t have sounded less interested [laughs]. I’m just like, ‘I don’t know what you guys do here, but we just made two holes-in-one on the same hole, and it was hole No.8.’ And she’s, like, ‘OK.’ I said, ‘So, I don’t know what your rule is here, but we’re happy to buy whisky for anybody in the town, let alone the club [laughs].’ And she goes, ‘OK, well, I guess what’s custom here is when you get back in, if there are people around, you can shout a bottle of whisky.’ So, we carried on and played our round out, and then we hung out with the locals.”
At the beginning of their trip, Jim bought a one-litre bottle of Código Reposado tequila. For every time they birdied a hole, they took a shot from a shot glass they bought from the Old Course at St Andrews.
“Needless to say, we enjoyed a little bit of tequila on the ninth tee before we hit,” Jim laughed.
For most, it takes a lifetime of playing golf to even have a chance at a hole-in-one. At 18, Blake is already there. And Jim is no stranger to the ace, as his shot at Cullen marked his 11th all-time hole-in-one.
After post-round whisky with the locals, Jim began thinking of ways to commemorate his and Blake’s shots – eventually settling on making a shadow box with the balls, potentially a picture of the hole, their scorecards and the now-empty bottle of Código Reposado.
It’s a special way to honour a moment the father and son will never forget – one that, statistics suggest, may never happen again.
– Additional reporting by Brad Clifton
QUICK FIVE: With Jim and Blake Rohrstaff
Australian Golf Digest: As a father, how special is it to share the fairways with your family, Jim?
Jim Rohrstaff: To me, it just doesn’t get any better. I mean, if you can share the game with the family, that’s such a cool thing to be able to do. Buddies’ trips are great, but it doesn’t get better than doing it with, for me, two sons and my wife, especially because we all like the game. Some are at different levels than the others, as far as how deep they are into it. But we all came away from this trip saying, “We could do a golf trip like this anytime, anywhere.” The reason family golf trips like ours are so good is because you’re so connected on the golf course – you’re walking together for four hours, chatting, telling stories, giving each other a hard time. There was plenty of ribbing (sledging) going on, as you can imagine. It’s such a great thing to do with family. This trip was our first one together. We didn’t know how it would go. It was brilliant. And regardless of this moment (the two holes-in-one), we’ll never forget it. Just the golf trip on its own, I would do it over again and again.
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Father-son aces will take some beating for a career highlight though, surely?
I had a match with Ryan Fox and Rory McIlroy and (the PGA Tour’s policy board member) Jimmy Dunne seven months ago. This blows that out of the water. This was the coolest experience, and the fact that we did it together – Kara and Eric included – is truly special.
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Blake, what’s the best piece of advice Dad has ever given you?
Blake Rohrstaff: The thing that has stuck with me the most was when we were in Wellington years ago and it was in that middle of the term when you get grades back from school. I did really badly on a maths test – I mean, I completely bombed it – and I was pretty down about it. And Mum and Dad were obviously pretty pissed [off]. They were like, “What are you doing?” And I think Dad just kind of said to me, “Look, you’ve got the personality and the character to do anything you want in this world.” And he just said, “Just go get it.” So that was definitely the one piece of advice that’s kind of stuck with me the most that I still think about. But everything else from him has been pretty unserious.
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What about you, Jim? What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from Blake and Eric?
Hit driver on the eighth at Cullen [laughs]. It’s funny, when you see your sons, you hope to see a lot of the best things of yourself. And so seeing that in the next generation and really [cheering] for them to be better than you, happier than you, trying to give them the tools and the pathway to achieve that – but not do it for them and not get in their way – is kind of what I try to learn and keep in perspective with the boys. Let them be them and give them the tools and, I guess, the bumpers of life. And they show me a lot in return, which is great. I love these two boys and they’re the best thing that’s ever happened to Kara and me. We’re very fortunate as a family that we get to spend a bit of time together and we love it. And that’s why we play golf together… to travel and enjoy our time as one.
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Did you keep the golf balls you used for those holes-in-one?
BR: Ha! Well, the first thing Dad says to me while we’re walking to the next green is, “Put your ball in your bag. Get a new ball.”
JR: I’m like, “You’re going to want to frame that ball,” because it was his first hole-in-one.
BR: So, we head to the next hole and it’s about 200 yards and straight towards the ocean. So, I hit my ball, nothing too memorable. Then, Dad teed his up and because he’s still just so jacked up and caught up in the moment, he didn’t switch his ball
and he’s…
JR: I just flush a 5-iron!
BR: Killed it!
JR: And pulled. As soon as I made contact, that ball was in the air and looking like it’s going in the drink. As it was sailing wide, that’s when it hit me, I didn’t switch my ball out. Luckily, it was long and left and didn’t quite make the ocean. Had it made it, I would’ve dived in after that one, for sure [laughs].
BR: We would have sent in a search party!
JR: I found it and immediately took that ball out of play. Suffice to say,
I won’t lose it ever again.
