Golf
GREENBUSHES men Brian Wright and Rodney Bunter both aced the “holy grail” of golf on the same day and in the same competition at the Greenbushes Golf Club on November 14.
Mr Wright, 80, scored a hole-in-one on the fourth hole after hitting the ball about 160 metres straight into “the hole”. Mr Bunter, some considerable years his junior, hit his ball about 150 metres on the 13th hole to score his big hit.
Both men were taking part in the Captain’s Trophy Stableford event on what they considered to be a Saturday like any other at the Greenbushes Golf Club when they reached the pinnacle of golf trophy shots less than an hour apart.
For Mr Bunter the incredible feat was his first ever hole-in-one in three years of playing at Greenbushes, but for Mr Wright it was the fourth time he scored a hole in one in his 35 years of golfing - and his second on the Greenbushes course.
Both men say there is something “lucky” about the Greenbushes Golf Course, with four hole-in-ones scored at the club in the past year and a half – two of those on hole number 13.
Mr Bunter said he and two other players were coming up the course just one hole behind Mr Wright, who was on the fourth hole, when he heard loud cheers up ahead and knew straight away that someone had scored a perfect shot.
“We didn’t know for sure but assumed it was a hole-in-one and we thought “good on him,” because it’s no easy feat,” Mr Bunter said.
Mr Bunter was in company with Greg Bacci, who had hit his own perfect shot on the 17th earlier in the year.
Concentrating on his own game, which he admits was causing him some grief due to problems with his driver, Mr Bunter said he wasn’t expecting that within the hour he too would be cheering at his own achievement.
“I was concentrating on birdies and trying to put the ball on the green and having a few problems,” he said.
“When I got to the 13th hole I hit one that was trucking a good line and everyone was watching to see where it would go and wondering if we could have two hole-in-ones that day,” he said.
“Then we started cheering when the ball went straight in.”
Both men say they haven’t spent a lot on their golf kit over the years, with Mr Wright playing with a bit of a “mixed bag” of old and new clubs gathered over his many years of playing.
“I’ve had the same old clubs for 12 years,” he said.
For the past three years he has taken to riding a golf buggy around the course.
“As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that the 19 holes is a bit hard when I’m walking all the way so I’ve been using the buggy, which makes it a lot easier when I’m playing twice a week,” he said.
Mr Wright has intimate knowledge of the Greenbushes Golf Course, having been a long time green keeper and still a regular mower of the course. However, he said he didn’t think that gave him the advantage.
“ I don’t actually think I’m going to get a hole-in-one when I go out there and in fact I played a week later and couldn’t even keep the ball on the fairway on the same hole so that’s just the fickleness of golf,” he said.
He scored his first hole-in-one early in his golf days in South Australia, with the second at Greenbushes, the third in the Lake District in England and the fourth at Greenbushes again.
Mr Bunter and Mr Wright had to delay their celebratory get together to chew over their double feat on Saturday November 14, with Mr Bunter having to leave early to take his injured wife Meghan to the hospital emergency department.
“I was just getting ready to text her about my achievements when I got a call to say she had slipped on the kid’s slide and hit her head so I spent the rest of the day in the emergency department in hospital,” Mr Bunter said.
The injury wasn’t serious and Mr Bunter and Mr Wright had a chance to catch up and discuss their luck at a regular Wednesday round of golf last week.
Members at the golf club are now pondering who might be next to hit the perfect shot.
