I have been a golfer for 52 years but did not get my first hole-in-one until 2019.

Today I was playing at my club which is Desert Dunes Golf Club in Desert Hot Springs, CA with my usual partner, Dave Cahill, PGA Master Professional. His son Michael (a +4 HCP), also a PGA Pro, usually rounds out our group but he couldn’t make it today.

I had only picked up a club again 6 days ago after a forced two month hiatus due to a broken left wrist from trying to not step on a very large snake back in May.

While the wrist is still quite weak, I am fortunate to not be in any pain. I have found that as long as I take the club back slowly, I can still maintain pretty good awareness of the clubhead. This has resulted is the strange benefit of forcing me to have really good tempo. Otherwise, if I get quick, my wrist is too weak to control the shot.

We started on the back today to try to stay ahead of the punters so it didn’t take us long to get to our first par 3 of the day, hole #14.

My normal ball is the Pro V1x but since I’m a least a full club shorter due to my injury, I was playing the AVX since it goes about half a club farther for me with similar spin.

Dave lasered the flagstick today at 153 yards. I had been long into a mild headwind the last few times. Today there was only a slight left to right wind so I felt confident in clubbing down to a 7 iron today.

Anyway, I struck the ball well enough that I didn’t need to say a word to it. It was one of those shots that looked like it could go in the whole way. It came in just a touch right to left and hit the green about 6 feet short and about 18” right, took one hop and went right in the whole.

That was according to Dave anyway. I have lousy eyesight so I had to take his word for it.

That makes ace #3 for me, all with Titleist!