According to Golf Digest, the odds on a PGA Tour player making a hole in one are roughly 3,000 to 1, the odds on a low-handicapper making an ace about 5,000 to 1 and the odds on an average player dunking his tee shot more like 12,000 to 1.
OK, but what are the odds on a father and daughter playing in the same threesome both making 1's in a span of five holes? The best guess would probably be somewhere in the range of 35 million to 1.
As statistically improbable as it sounds, that's what Dana Hasselberg and her father, Glen, did on March 20 during a round at Angel Park in Las Vegas.
"We had our Minnesota gang of Dwight Lundeen (Becker), David Lundeen (Little Falls), Greg Johnson (Delano), Gary 'Shooter' Fredrickson (Becker), Dan Johnson (Hopkins), along with Dana and me," Glen reported on his return. "We played the Mountain Course in the morning followed by the Palmer Course in the afternoon."
The group lost one of its number when Fredrickson had to leave after nine holes in the afternoon to catch a plane. That left the Lundeen brothers and Greg Johnson in the first threesome, with Dan Johnson and the Hasselberg father-daughter combo in the second.
On the 13th hole, which was playing 114 yards according to a laser measurement, Dana knocked the ball into the cup with a pitching wedge.
"Much cheering," noted the proud father.
Dana is a 3.5-handicapper, and she's had a lot of success in golf. At Staples-Motley High School, where her father was the head coach, she played on two state championship teams, a state runner-up and another team that finished third in her six varsity seasons. She also played four years of college golf, the first year and a half at Bradley and the last two and a half at Bemidji State.
All of that notwithstanding, this was the first hole in one for the 26-year-old.
Four holes later, at No. 17, a 174-yard par-3, the Lundeen-Lundeen-Johnson group waved up the Hasselberg-Hasselberg-Johnson threesome, and Glen, using a 7-wood, didn't bother with the formality of landing his ball and letting it roll into the cup. He landed it in the cup on the fly!
"Six witnesses," Hasselberg pointed out. "You can't beat that. To have the other group all standing there on the green watching the shot, that was priceless."
Another aspect of the hole in one that Hasselberg enjoyed was the fact that this was his 10th, which means that he is now tied in that category with his neighbor, Bill Israelson.
"So Izzy doesn't have that to hold over me anymore," Glen said, giving a clue to the nature of their relationship, in which both parties spent large percentages of their days trying to think of new and imaginative ways to needle each other.
Hasselberg, who is the MGA Northwest Region Vice-President just turned 59 this week (he was born on March 26, 1949, which was a Saturday) and sports a 6.4 handicap, isn't sure but he has probably used nine different clubs to make his 10 aces, beginning with a driver.
"I made the first one on the old 10th hole at Bemidji Town & County, which was a par-4," he said. "And I don't remember making any two of them with the same club, except for a 6-iron. I think I made two with that club."
In 1999, Golf Digest reported that an insurance company had put the odds on a pro making an ace at 1 in 3,756 to one. And or an amateur: 1 in 12,750. The same issue had the odds of an amateur making two holes in one in the same round at 9,222,500 to 1.
But a year later, the magazine commissioned Francis Scheid, Ph.D., the retired chairman of the Boston University math department, to re-calculate the odds.
Among other things, he determined that the odds on one player making two aces in the same round were 67 million to 1.
He said nothing, at least not that Golf Digest reported, about the odds on a father and daughter both accomplishing the feat in the same round.
"I really do wonder what the odds are," Glen said. "It sure was fun. As much as I enjoyed making one myself, it was even more special -- way more special, I'd have to say -- that Dana got her first one."
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