Conor Kelly’s week at the Junior Golf Hub Championship in Halifax, Mass., didn’t get off to a great start when he opened with a first-round 81 on Tuesday. It got better Wednesday when he bounced back with a 76. Then, on Thursday, it changed completely, nearly all at once.
Kelly, a member of the class of 2019 who is based out of Bangkok, Thailand, stepped up to the 198-yard 8th hole at Country Club of Halifax and promptly holed his tee shot. Plenty of talented golfers, of course, can go a lifetime without making an ace; even Tour pros are estimated to have about a 1 in 2,500 chance of holing a given tee shot on a par 3.
But then Kelly did something far more rare: at the reachable par-5 9th hole, he took aim with his second shot and rolled that one into the hole as well for an albatross deuce. One study cited only “a couple hundred” double eagles recorded per year, putting the odds of such a feat in the ballpark of one million-to-one. The odds of doing so back to back? Get your calculators out.
The American Junior Golf Association, understandably excited, posted Kelly’s photo with his scorecard. “Is this the greatest feat in the history of golf?!” the caption read.
Even better, Kelly birdied the par-4 10th hole, making for a particularly sporty 1-2-3 ace-deuce-trey lineup on the middle of his scorecard. The stretch powered him to a round of five-under 67 that brought him inside the top 20 in the final round of the event.
You can see results (and the scorecard)Â here.
