Quiz! Hole In One Stats And Facts

Ryan Fox celebrates with his caddie Dean Smith after his hole in one on the island 17th hole during the first round of the 2024 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass

(Image credit: Getty Images)

This golf quiz is about something even many non golfers have heard about, whether from that corny old joke “why does a golfer carry a spare pair of socks? It’s in case he gets a hole in one”; or perhaps from the tradition that someone making a hole in one buying drinks all round. (This always struck me as unfair as the player with what might well be a once-in-a-lifetime achievement – see question 7 for further details about this aspect – is effectively punished, at least in the wallet, for it.)

I have never made a hole in one (well not yet… lets be positive here, after all time may be still on my side – see question 4), but I was playing with my elder brother when he made a hole in one using a putter. It was on a 85-yard hole at my club.

This prompted me to look up some facts on hole in ones, or aces as they are sometimes called. On the principle of waste not want not, here comes a quiz based on these, including some statistics and a story of an ace even more outrageously unlikely than that of my brother’s.

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Contributing Writer Roderick is the author of the critically acclaimed comic golf novels, Summer At Tangents, which was one of Country Life magazine's Books of The Year for 2024 and nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, and Crime Wave At Tangents. Golf courses and travel are Roderick’s particular interests. He writes travel articles and general features for the magazine and website and compiles the magazine's crossword. He is a member of Trevose and has played golf in around two dozen countries. Cricket is his other main sporting love. He is also the author of five non-fiction books, four of which are still in print: The Novel Life of PG Wodehouse; The Don: Beyond Boundaries; Wally Hammond: Gentleman & Player and England’s Greatest Post-War All Rounder.