MARBLEHEAD — John, Lisa, Susan, and Ray walk into Tedesco Country Club. The rest, well, it wasn’t an anomaly, but rather, a near-impossibility.
Tedesco’s eighth hole saw not one, not two, not three, but four holes in one Friday, according to the club.
“It was a special day,” said Ryan Train, Tedesco’s head golf professional. “It created a lot of buzz.”
The eighth hole is a short, 130-yard par 3 with a sloped, small green surrounded by bunkers. Train isn’t sure how many holes in one have been scored on the hole, historically.
“I don’t know specifically,” Train said. “So four in one day is nuts.”
Whether it was an Irish coffee at 9 a.m. when the first entered the hole, or a beer at 4:30 p.m. as the fourth went down, free drinks – and new flags for the hole – were plentiful as golfers who ace get to keep the flag.
“I changed out the flag three times in a few hours,” Train said.
But it all started with John Kane, and what a feel-good moment it was.
“When you hear a clang, you know you’re close,” Kane said. “It’s a bizarre feeling.”
His only other hole in one came in 1969 – the same day as the moon landing. Adding to the craziness, it was the same exact hole.
“It was the same hole just with a 9-iron instead of an 8-iron,” Kane said.
To say the least, Kane was more competitive with the sport back then, and Friday’s approach was just a tad different.
“I drove the ball in hopes that it’ll make contact and I prayed it won’t go in the water or sand,” Kane said. “There was no strategy behind it.”
Twenty minutes later at 9:20 a.m., Lisa DeSalvo was golfing with three friends. Spoiler alert, it happened again.
“It goes up in the air, it’s up on the green, and I go, ‘It’s not in the trap,’” DeSalvo said. “They were screaming, ‘It went in.’ We went crazy.”
Using a pitching wedge, it was her third career hole-in-one – the first two coming on Tedesco’s 13th hole. Better yet, she’s now tied with a certain someone.
“And now, I’m even with my husband (Chuck),” DeSalvo said.
All of a sudden at 10:30 a.m., Susan Ryan hit a shot over the sand trap with her 9-iron when her golfing mate told her “it’s still rolling.”
Well, it rolled all the way in for the course’s third hole-in-one in 90 minutes.
“Better to be lucky than good,” Ryan said.
Her grandson, Corso, was born that morning, too.
“I was already feeling lucky,” Ryan said.
Ryan had “no idea” about the first two – that was, until she walked into the clubhouse.
“Drinks were on the house so I went up with my friend and got some bubbly,” Ryan said.
With how Friday was going, you could say the hours of 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. were pretty boring. Then, Ray Colwell stepped up to the plate with his son, Jack, at 4:30 p.m.
“Eh, we’ll just play nine, then we’ll quit,” Colwell said.
Fast forward a few minutes, and Colwell had different plans.
“Then I put it in and said, ‘We’re finishing,’” Colwell said. “I played terribly after that. I couldn’t take my mind off it.”
In the clubhouse – and for the rest of the weekend – he “felt like a celebrity” being the fourth to conquer the hole.
“People were coming up to me like, ‘Hey, I heard the news,’” Colwell said. “I said, ‘How did you hear about that? I just did it.’”
The 58-year-old Colwell has been playing since age 13, and the shot heard ’round Marblehead was his first hole-in-one.
“Then I bought a lottery ticket,” said Colwell, who accidentally shot his ball into the woods minutes later. “Let’s keep it rolling.”
Two days later on Sunday, Train was still changing out flags as Holly Zmetrovich scored another hole-in-one on the eighth hole.
And what three days they were at Tedesco, and – at press time – there are no more holes in one to report.
“It was crazy,” Colwell said. “You don’t see that every day.”
