Two aces in same roundrated a 67M to 1 shot

mid sussex gc seniors captain ray hackett presents the 2s pot to alan Benfell after his two holes-in-one in the same round

Playing in a senior section stableford competition at his Mid Sussex GC in Ditchling on Monday, Alan used the same ball and same No 6 iron to fire aces at the 134yd-fifth and the 158yd-15th.

Club professional Michael Henning googled the odds as soon as he heard of the amazing feat and it came out at a staggering 67 million to 1.

Speaking the following day, Alan said: “The second time it happened I was waiting for the alarm clock to go off! It really was amazing. Another reality check came when I got the bar bill afterwards. I’ve seen toilet rolls shorter than that.”

But it was a truly memorable day for the 27-handicapper, who lives in Wivelsfield Green, and was all the more surprising as he wasn’t having a particularly good round.

“I wasn’t playing particularly well. I’d been in the water three times with the same ball and in a bunker four times,” he said. “In the end I had the two eagles and three pars but failed to score on five holes.”

He did not figure amongst the top three in his section but did pick up the twos pot, where a high turn-out of 81 seniors at least offset a little of the bar bill.

Alan took up golf only in his fifties, shortly before he retired from running a mushroom processing business near Rye.

“The nearest I’d ever got to a hole-in-one before that was when they used to leave yesterday’s holes open and my ball disappeared down that on the fifth,” he explained.

Alan was the club’s seniors captain back in 2002 but these days does not play quite as much. “I normally try to play once a week in the winter and probably twice in the summer.

Clearly he likes the sun on his back as Monday’s weather was almost spring-like.