A standard, regulation-sized golf ball is a smidge smaller than1.7 inches(4.3 centimeters) in diameter. Or, for comparison's sake, just a little larger than your garden-variety ping pong ball.
The standard, round cup that snuggles into an earthen hole on your run-of-the-mill manicured green on any of the more than 15,000 golf courses in the United States —or the more than 33,000 throughout the world— is, by rule,4.25 inches(10.8 centimeters) in diameter.
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Small ball. Big hole. So, what's the problem? Said no one who ever swung a club at a golf ball in his or her life.
Golf is hard. Getting that little ball into that not-so-big cup is way more difficult than Tiger Woods and those other professionals make it look. And for proof (other than trying it yourself, that is), the non-golfer should consider the Holy Grail of golf, the ever-elusive, never-foreseen, always-magical hole-in-one.
If golf is hard — and, again, give it a try if you've never — the quest for a hole-in-one is downrightcruel. The odds of it are nothitting-the-lotteryodds. But they might as well be.
To be sure, pros likeBryson DeChambeauand贾斯汀•托马斯can pop in an ace every once in a while. (And on the same day at the most prestigious tournament in the world, The Masters, no less.) But for youraverage golfer? Let's go to the scorecard:
According to the National Hole-In-One Registry, which a tad immodestly back-slaps itself as "The Premiere Worldwide Hole-In-One Golf Registry,"somewhere north of 128,000 holes-in-oneare registered every year. Which sounds like a lot. Except golfers play somewhere around450 million roundsof golf every year.
That means a hole-in-one is officially registered about once every 3,500 rounds. (A round is generallyconsidered 18 holes, though the United States Golf Association sometimes accepts a hole-in-one on a shortened round.) If you play a round of golf a day, it'd take more than 9.5 years to get in 3,500 rounds. If you play twice a week, it'd take you more than 33.6 years to get in 3,500 rounds.
Another business, National Hole-In-One Insurance — it provides protection to golf courses that give out prizes for holes-in-ones during competitions — estimates that, for your average player,the odds of holing out in one stroke are 12,000 to 1. A PGA Tour pro, like DeChambeau or Thomas, faces 2,500-to-1 odds. On every chance at an ace.
这些数字,毫无疑问ly, are a little sketchy. The USGA isn't exactly looking over every golfer's shoulder. Video proof is not required. A credible witness is about all you need.
Still, as any weekend duffer who's gone at the pin on a par 3 knows, just about any ace (flat-out cheating and do-overs notwithstanding) is a legit ace.
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