The par 4, fifth on the Mount Kidd course at Kananaskis, is your classic risk/reward hole.
You can play it safe and lay up with an iron. Or you can pull out the big stick and go for the green.
Simon Twogood had no hesitation when he got to the tee box on the 277-yard hole – it was driver all the way.
"You wouldn’t really want to play it up, I think you just gotta go for the green," Twogood said Friday.
It was the best decision Twogood made all day. He knew right when the ball came off the clubface, it was a good shot.
"It’s one of those shots where it comes off the club, the swing feels perfect, the delivery feels perfect, everything about it, perfect," he said. "It was nice and straight which is pretty rare for me. "
As the ball soared through the air toward the green, Twogood said everyone in his group had their eyes glued on what was happening.
"And we saw it rolling towards the pin and we kind of stop seeing it. One of the guys said ‘that’s crazy’, it was like right at the pin, that could’ve even been in the hole."
When they got to the green, Twogood didn’t see his ball so he thought it must have rolled off the back, but one of his playing partners suggested he go look in the hole.
"And so I walked back over and there it is, it’s lying in the hole."
And that’s when the golfer found out his shot was 'too good' to be true.
He had the rare albatross and got to mark down a 1 on a par 4. Twogood said he was stunned.
"It almost feels like someone is playing a trick on you. Maybe someone like, kicked it in there."
It's not the first hole-in-one on a par 4 at Kananaskis.
There was another one on the 11th hole of the Mount Kidd course before it was badly damaged in the flood of 2013.
Head pro Bob Paley says Twogood’s was well-earned.
"It’s one of the smallest, if not the smallest greens of all the 36 that we have and it was a front pin and it was unbelievably mounded," he said. "I don’t know what the odds are normally for a hole-in-one but this was extraordinary with distance and contours and it was amazing."
Twogood has been playing golf for 15 years and this was his first hole-in-one.
He said the funniest thing about the story is after the hole-in-one, no one in his group played very well.
"I struggled leading up to that hole and I struggled every hole after that. But you know actually, the best part was it rattled the three that I was golfing with so much that basically the rest of their round was shot," he said.
Twogood definitely got the bragging rights and said at least for one day, it was nice living up to his last name.
