A 'Good Omen' for Golf Team?

Liam Hughes had a once-in-a-lifetime moment last week when, during a routine practice at with the rest of the boys’ golf team, he sunk a hole in one.

To put Liam’s accomplishment into perspective, Laurel Creek golf pro John Dimarco said the odds of an amateur golfer shooting a hole in one are about 1 in 12,000. (It climbs to about 1 in 3,700 for the PGA pros.) Dimarco said the country club has about five or six holes in one in a given year; Liam’s was the first of 2012.

“It’s pretty rare,” Dimarco said, especially for such a young amateur. He said he couldn’t remember a boys’ golf team member ever getting a hole in one, and Liam said head coach Tim O’Reilly told him it was the first he’d ever seen during a practice.

“It was crazy. At first I didn’t believe it, because it’s so rare,” Liam said. “It might never happen to me again … My grandfather’s been playing for 40 years and he’s never had one.”

Liam, 15, a sophomore at , was teeing off from the third hole (par 3). There’s a bunker to the right of the hole, he explained, so he angled his shot from left to right. It landed to the left of the pin, took a couple hops, and rolled right in.

Liam said he and his teammates had that initial “Wha-?” moment before they realized what had happened.

“We kind of thought, ‘Did that go in?’” he recalled. “Then we saw our coach and he indicated it went in and he started getting really excited.”

Liam, who joined the team last year as a freshman, admitted the hole in one was “definitely” a combination of strategy and luck—not that it seemed to matter to him how it happened, just that it happened.

“I’m just excited to get one,” he said.

Liam's mother, Michelle, said she hopes Liam's feat is a "good omen" for the upcoming season. 

The on April 3.