Golfing great Jack Nicklaus once remarked, “Holes-in-one are freak accidents of skill. You aim, you pray, and sometimes, the golf gods smile.” His contemporary, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, offered a more whimsical take: “You don’t ‘get’ a hole-in-one; a hole-in-one gets you. It’s like catching lightning in a bottle—rare, random, and magical.”
Imagine Mike de Kock’s astonishment when he landed the first ace of his life during a casual Friday round at Cotswold Downs Golf Club in Hillcrest, KZN, last Friday. Even more surprising? The shot earned him a bonus of R250,000!
This windfall came after Mike paid an extra R30 on top of his regular green fees to enter the club’s Hole-In-One Competition. Launched in December 2017, the initiative invites golfers to pay a small fee for the chance to win a cash prize if they sink a hole-in-one, with a portion of proceeds going to charity.
The club, which has a spectacular Peter Matkovich-designed course, selected their signature Par 3 fifth hole as the competition hole. The website, satop100courses.com, reported: “This is an especially difficult Par 3, because the tee shot is played from high up on the edge of a hill, to a green that seems hundreds of meters away. With the sharp drop in elevation and water short of the green, you struggle to take less club for fear of taking too little. The 5th hole is a good test of trust, and a great hole to add to the list of “coolest holes I have ever played”. The hole demands the perfect shot to find the bottom of the cup. Par is a great escape!”
The odds of getting a hole-in-one, anywhere, are not particularly good – for the average golfer, around 12 000 to 1. Cotswold Downs invested in three cameras to monitor the fifth hole, and, before Mike’s great shot, there were only a handful of others that claimed the loot.
In February 2019 Laurie Burn netted himself R200 000, and in June 2019 Cotswold Downs resident Peter Griffin pocketed R90 000. There was another ace when the pot was standing at R35 000, but the golfer in question had mistakenly assumed his playing partner had bought a ticket for him. The camera photos showed a golfer in abject misery at having made an ace!
Mike said that his was a stroke of good luck and thanked Cotswold Downs for their initiative. “This is a great and well-maintained course to play, as challenging as they come. It’s a super initiative because, despite the remote chance of getting a hole-in-one, it brings players back to try, week after week, and charity benefits.”
Mike also thanked his friend Ian Horsefield and said: “I play in Ian’s Friday school whenever I am in Durban and they’re a wonderful bunch of guys.”
