For many golfers, winning a club championship or making a hole-in-one are lifetime goals, but for English club golfer Ali Gibb, those goals were accomplished over a few hours earlier this week.
Gibb, who already owns three aces to her credit, won her second consecutive club championship at Croham Hurst Golf Club in Surrey while making three aces over 36 holes.
The odds of an average golfer making a hole-in-one is 12,000-to-1, according to the National Hole-in-One Registry. They set the odds of a player making two holes-in-one during the same round are 67 million-to-one, so what Gibb did, by some other rough amateur estimates, puts her feat somewhere in couple billion-to-one.
“Today was just a weird day. It was just very, very strange,” Gibb said, according to BBC Sport. “On my card, I had a nine, two eights, sixes, fives, fours, threes, twos and three ones. Our pro Adam came up to me and said, ‘I’ve had one hole-in-one in 42 years, you’ve just had three in five hours.'”
Gibb made an ace both times through the par-3 fifth and then added her third on the 11th during the second round of the 36-hole event.
“I have had a hole-in-one before – three actually. One was here on the seventh, one at Surrey National Golf Club, and one at the Atlantic Beach Golf Estate in South Africa,” she said. “It’s just absolutely extraordinary. I think I will wake up tomorrow asking if I’ve just been dreaming about it and if it is club championship day today instead!”
Gibb shot rounds of 81 and 82 to win the gross title. Aside from defending her club champion status, Gibb was also gifted three bottles of champagne to celebrate.
“It was fantastic, a great occasion,” club secretary Jean Cooke said. “It’s the biggest golf day of our year, and as news traveled around the course, the buzz was spreading. Scoring one hole-in-one in a whole lifetime is unusual but three in one day is extremely rare if not unique.”
