43 years later, ‘ace’ hot topic
An interesting news item out of Lake Chelan crossed my desk earlier this month and rekindled a golf memory from my days as a young sports writer at The Nonpareil newspaper in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The press release came from Bear Mountain Ranch Golf Course and detailed a hole-in-one registered by John Christensen, the head professional at The Highlander Golf Course in East Wenatchee.
What made Christensen’s ace so unusual was the fact that it came on Bear Mountain’s 323-yard par-4 second hole.
“I have to be the luckiest guy I know,” Christensen said in the release.
Christensen’s ace, the ninth of his career, got me thinking back to a round of golf I played at Miracle Hill Golf Course in Omaha back in the mid-1970s. I don’t remember much about the course, in general, but I can still recall the moment I stepped onto the tee box at the 10th hole, a 460-yard downhill par-4.
It was a straight-away hole featuring a severe dropoff about 270 yards down the fairway. Because of the dropoff, the domed greened was not visible from the tee box, but that hardly mattered.
What made the hole so memorable was the plaque that was placed there more than 40 years ago to commemorate the hole-in-one Robert Mitera made there on Oct. 7, 1965.
The hole was playing 447 yards that day, and Mitera, a 21-year-old college student and 2-handicapper at the time, took advantage of a strong, gusty wind at his back to launch his tee shot over the dropoff, where it reportedly rolled down the 55-foot embankment, onto the green and into the cup.
Mitera never saw his ball after it carried over the dropoff, but the members of the group playing in front of him testified to watching it roll into the hole.
Mitera’s feat, which was later listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, was the longest hole-in-one ever recorded on a non-dogleg hole. It was a remarkable record that stood until February 9, 2007, when Bret Melson aced the 448-yard, par-4 18th hole at the Ko’olau Golf Club in Oahu, Hawaii.
Melson’s ace was reportedly witnessed by two playing partners – both of whom saw his ball carry the wide, deep ravine in front of the elevated tee box and roll onto the green – and seemed to slide into the record books without debate.
Still, I remember standing on the 10th tee at Miracle Hill, reading about Mitera’s hole-in-one and – like many others who have heard of the miracle shot – questioning its authenticity.
A fascinating article, raising some of the same questions I had, appeared in Golf Digest in March of 2001. The piece was written by Ron Whitten, who made numerous attempts to contact Mitera and discuss the golf shot that had made him a short-lived national celebrity and earned him a trip – courtesy of Golf Digest – to New York, where he was honored at a luncheon.
According to Whitten, the phone calls he made to Mitera, who was living in Omaha with mother, were met with terse, testy answers to his questions about the hole-in-one.
“Mostly, he’d berate me for pestering him and then hang up,” Whitten wrote.
Whitten’s article pointed out that the folks at Guinness waited three years before adding Mitera’s record to their book because of their own suspicions, telling one of the owners of Miracle Hill of their concern that the people playing ahead of Mitera might have put his ball in the hole as a joke.
Whitten went so far as to track down Richard Keckler, one of the golfers playing ahead of Mitera, and Keckler insisted he and his playing partner, who has since died, watched as the ball landed “probably 75 yards short of the green, ran down the slope through a swale, up onto the green and into the hole.”
Obviously, I knew nothing of Mitera’s hole-in-one details, other than those printed on the plaque, prior to playing Miracle Hills’ miracle hole. But as I chased my drive, which landed well short of the dropoff, I could not grasp the notion of a golf ball – even one riding the major wind gusts that were reported that day – carrying to the downslope and then running another 75 yards and into the hole.
Today, with the technological strides being made in golf club and golf ball design, it would be much easier to accept. But in 1965? With the 5-foot-6, 165-pound Mitera hitting a persimmon driver?
Still, Whitten, in his article, ultimately seemed convinced that Mitera’s hole-in-one was the real thing.
Whitten’s well-researched story and my own memories of the 10th hole at Miracle Hill prompted me to call the course to see if Mitera’s ace was still a topic of discussion.
“Everything here is still kind of associated with that one shot,” assistant pro Josh Haney said. “We’ve even got a little wooden gazebo near the first hole commemorating it.”
As for the plaque on the 10th tee box that first introduced me to Robert Mitera, Haney assured me it is still there, producing lasting memories, no doubt, for those who believe and those of us who don’t.