Most golfers dream of scoring a hole-in-one on any par 3. Golf course designer Jay Blasi did one better.
Blasi, who serves on Golfweek’s Best architectural advisory panel and often hosts course-rating events, used driver to ace the short, downhill par-4 14th of Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley Resort in Wisconsin.
The hole tips out at 325 yards. Blasi was playing the orange tees as he led a group of Golfweek’s Best raters around the David McLay Kidd-designed layout. He said it was playing 272 on a direct line at the flag. As seen in the video below, it took a few seconds to register.
“On a par 3, anytime you hit one towards the hole you have a sliver of hope it will go in,” Blasi told Golfweek. “On a drivable par 4, the hole becomes the green itself and you feel like you accomplished your goal if you knock it on. In this case it landed on the green in line with the flag, rolled at the hole and disappeared. The feeling was more shock and awe than pure joy for me. But for the group it was just bliss.”
Blasi didn’t immediately share details via text about what his bar tab might have been after buying a round for the house to celebrate, but the Golfweek’s Best raters can be a thirsty bunch with high standards.
The hole curves sharply downhill with a feeder slope coming in from the right on a typically firm fairway, allowing players to send the ball out wide of multiple centerline bunkers and still feed it onto the green. It’s not exactly a monster so long as players miss the sand, but still, a hole-in-one? Pretty cool and totally unforgettable for Blasi on a course that ranks No. 3 among all public-access layouts in the state and is No. 36 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of all modern courses in the U.S.
No. 14 of Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin (Brandon Carter/Sand Valley)
The Wisconsin-raised, California-based Blasi sports a 2.9 handicap index and previously had made four holes-in-one on par 3s at a strong lineup of courses: The Patriot in Oklahoma (after having helped design the course, he made the first ace on opening day), Stanford Golf Course in California, Pasatiempo in California and Omni PGA Frisco’s short course named the Swing (of course we count them on par-3 courses!) in Texas.
The latest ace comes on the heels of Blasi complaining to this writer about the state of his game. Might that have anything to do with the fact we’re opposing captains in the Ryder Cup-style, Golfweek’s Best rater-based Scratch Cup in October? After the hole-in-one, this writer and his team are accepting thoughts and prayers.
