“I belong to the Lowcountry Senior Center, so I played with that group every Thursday morning,” Sam said. “I didn’t see it go in. The three guys I was playing with hit first, and they are all walking up, and when I hit my shot they’re all exclaiming, ‘Oh my gosh.’ The cup was in the center of the swail. My shot, instead of a nice little loft, it stayed close to the ground. It went by about 10 inches and then came back into the hole.”
Cotes Simons Jr., with wife Tylar (not pictured) and sons Grange and Adger, made a hole-in-one on Oct. 11 at Etowah Valley Golf Club in western North Carolina. Twenty years earlier, he and his father both made aces at Charleston courses.
Provided
On Oct. 11 of this year, we have another hole-in-one to add to this familial story of holes in one. Cotes Jr., now 35, and his wife were celebrating their fifth anniversary at Etowah Valley Golf Club in western North Carolina with their sons Grange, 3, and Adger, 1½. A 4-iron from 178 yards on the fifth hole was the perfect shot and gave Cotes Jr. his second hole-in-one.
“I watched it rolling on the green, and then suddenly it disappeared. I yelled out, ‘Oh man!’ and my wife, who was watching the kids looked at me and said, ‘What’s wrong? Did you hit somebody?’ That was her first assumption, that I hit somebody and not a hole-in-one,” Cotes said with a laugh.
“It was a nice 4-iron, a baby draw. The pin was in the back of the green. The ball landed on a ridge and rolled right to the hole. Everybody got on the cart and we rode up to the green. We didn’t see the ball on the green, so I had my wife take the phone to film it. My youngest son got off the cart, and I told him to go up to the hole and see if the ball was in the hole. He ran up and looked down, and when Tylar asked him if it was in the hole, he screamed ‘Yes!’ and pulled the ball out. He handed it to my youngest son. That was a real special moment.”
Cotes Jr. got his start in golf with his father, and the two still play. Mom also loves the game. And Cotes Jr. is passing his love for the game to his sons, who got to be a part of every golfer’s dream.
“I played a lot when I was a kid,” he said. “People say when they have kids they play less golf, but now that I have kids, it seems like I’m playing more golf. I got our oldest son, Grange, a starter set of clubs. I throw a ball out for him. I’ll hit my ball, he hits his ball. It’s become more of a family thing rather than an individual sport.”