WHEN Kevin Isbester stood on the tee at Nambour’s short par-three sixth hole, he felt pretty confident. After all, the 78-year-old veteran had scored a hole-in-one there – his first after a lifetime in golf – only two days earlier.

Not that he thought history would repeat itself. He knew the chances of scoring another ace were so remote it wasn’t worth thinking about.

But golf can throw up the most unlikely storylines and, for Kevin, it was his moment to be included in the game’s catalogue of truly outrageous achievers.

He played a nine-iron, his usual club of choice on this 85m hole, where the contours of the green make it more difficult than its modest distance would suggest.

Even Kevin will concede he didn’t strike the ball perfectly on that October morning, not nearly as well as his tee shot on the same hole in the Wednesday members’ competition two days earlier, when his ball flew truly and bounced once before rolling into the cup.

This time his Titleist No 2 didn’t gain the same altitude. But it was straight and had just enough impetus to roll into the hole for his second ace in 48 hours – a feat so rare that nobody has even thought of calculating the odds against it happening.

It’s generally accepted that the chances of achieving a hole-in-one are 12,500 to one, and that only eight in 1000 golfers are ever likely to feel the thrill of scoring an ace.

History repeated itself for Nambour’s Kevin Isbester.

Research the feat in a little more detail and you’ll find the odds of making two holes-in-one in a single round – comparable, perhaps, to Kevin’s effort – are said to be about 67 million to one. 

Remarkably, that’s been done more than once, last year by American professional Frank Bensel Jnr who, in the second round of the 2024 US Seniors Open at Newport, Rhode Island, aced successive holes – the par-three fourth and fifth.

Despite this remarkable achievement, 56-year-old Bensel managed a score of just one-over-par for his first nine, four over for the round, nine over for the first 36 holes, and he didn’t make the cut.

Even more recently, Marty Lerner, 82, followed the first ace of his life on the 95m second hole at Park Ridge golf course, near Wellington, Florida, with another on the 93m ninth hole just a few months ago.

Lerner, retired from the financial world and living in Delray Beach, scored 44 for his first nine, but only 56 for the back nine, declaring ‘my brain was no longer on the game.’ Next morning he was out on the driving range, trying to discover why he couldn’t shoot straight every time.

None of this was of much interest to Kevin Isbester, though, as he soaked up the congratulations of his playing partners, the same trio he played with in both the Wednesday and Friday events.

Kevin has been a regular competitor on both days since he joined Nambour seven years ago. 

Scoring a hole-in-one, of course, is the goal of every person who has ever played the game. For most of us it’s a dream never fulfilled. Statistically, we can expect to score an ace only once in every 3500 rounds.

Some do it far more regularly, though. American Dan DeCando, for instance, has reportedly scored more than 90.

DeCando, a cigar-chomping owner of a payroll services company in New Jersey, is a double-digit handicap golfer who played the game for nearly 40 years before scoring his first hole-in-one in 2000.

Since then the 82-year-old claims to have amassed 91 aces, 60 of them coming in just 500 rounds during 2015 and 2016 when he was in his early 70s. And he says he has pictures and proof of every one. 

A New York University statistics professor calculated that the probability of making that many aces is equivalent to a poker player being dealt 20 successive royal flush hands.

DeCando, who understandably claims to be ‘the greatest hole-in-one golfer of all time,’ is probably glad he doesn’t live in Japan or South Korea. 

There, scoring a hole-in-one is a prestigious achievement, affording the successful player the honour of hosting a lavish party – not just for his golfing buddies but for his family, friends and associates, all of whom receive food, wine and a special gift.

So expensive is the celebration that 40% of golfers in those countries routinely take out hole-in-one insurance, which costs them between $60 and $100 a year.

Advancing years, it seems, is no deterrent to scoring aces. Golfers aged 70 and over are responsible for nearly 10% of all holes-in-one, while 60% of aces are made by golfers aged 50 and above. Indeed, the oldest player to score a hole-in-one was 103.

Plenty of time for Kevin Isbester to improve on his record.