Hole-In-One! – Brooks Hits a Memorable Golf Shot
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Hole-In-One! – Brooks Hits a Memorable Golf Shot -
Mac Brooks is shown above, left, holding the ball he hit a hole-in-one with last week at Frisch Auf! Valley Country Club, and right, at the new golf simulator at Mac’s Daqs that he credits with helping his golf game.
Some sources say the odds of hitting a hole-in-one on a Par 4 hole in golf are 6 million to one.
Other sources say it’s more like 1 million to one.
Either way, such a feat is a once-in-several-lifetimes accomplishment.
Only seven pro golfers have ever done it in tournament play.
Up until last week, no one had ever hit a hole-in-one on the Par 4 Hole #1 at Frisch Auf! Valley Country Club in La Grange.
But on June 19, La Grange’s Mac Brooks hit that miracle shot during a Thursday night four-man scramble tournament at Frisch Auf!
That makes Brooks an easy choice as this week’s Fayette County Athlete of the Week.
Brooks and his team started on Hole 6 in the tournament, “so by the time I got to Hole 1, I was warmed up,” Brooks said. “I couldn’t have done it on a cold start.”
He knew immediately it was a great shot – he just didn’t know how good.
“It’s 280 (yards), but it’s downhill so it plays like a 260,” Brooks said. “I used my driver. I started celebrating as soon as I hit the green, but I didn’t think it would ever go in.”
His teammates (Caden Cooper, Kevin Schattle, and Mark Lindquist) told him he had made the hole in one, but Brooks didn’t believe them.
“I didn’t believe it until we actually drove down there and I saw it wasn’t behind the pin but was actually in the hole,” he said. “Everyone was in disbelief. I did a couple of handshakes. I couldn’t believe it happened. It didn’t feel real.”
There wasn’t time for a lot of celebration – there was the rest of the tournament to finish.
“We were actually playing pretty bad in the tournament but that turned things around for us,” Brooks said. “We placed second.”
Brooks actually won some money on a closest-to-the-pin contest on the next hole (No. 2), but that was all spent on a wild celebration after the tourney as all the drinks were on his tab. He kept the ball and the scorecard, but actually hasn’t played golf since, though he said he’ll probably be back playing in this week’s Thursday tourney.
What makes Brooks’ accomplishment all the more amazing is that he’s a relatively new golfer.
“I probably started playing at Frisch Auf! about three years ago,” Brooks said. “I never played in high school or college or anything like that. Just picked it up to waste time with some buddies, something to do.”
But he’s been making up for lost time.
Brooks co-owns Mac’s Daqs in downtown La Grange with his wife Kelsey (their bar will celebrate three years in business this fall). Their newest addition to the bar is a Trackman iO golf simulator.
“I play every day on this thing now,” Brooks said. “I’ve been putting in about 100 reps a day, so that definitely contributed to this feat.”