Frank Bensel Jr. made history Friday morning when he turned up a pair of aces — on back-to-back holes — in the second round of the U.S. Senior Open.
The 56-year-old golfer from Jupiter, Florida, made a 173-yard hole-in-one in the fourth hole at Newport Country Club when he whacked a 6-iron.
The feat was amazing enough until he followed it up with another ace on the 202-yard fifth hole with the same club. Both holes are par 3.
While consecutive holes-in-one are exceedingly rare, it’s also unusual for a course to have par-3’s on two straight holes, like the setup at the 7,024-yard, par-70 Newport Country Club this week.
The National Hole-In-One Registry, which accesses the probability of aces in golf, calculated the odds of making two holes-in-one in the same round as 67 million-to-1. There are no odds available for back-to-back aces, perhaps because it was never considered as most courses don’t have consecutive par 3s.
The only other USGA championship to have a player card two holes-in-one was at the 1987 U.S. Mid-Amateur when Donald Bliss aced the eighth and 10th holes. Because he started on the back nine, Bliss got a hole-in-one on his first hole of the day and his 17th at Brook Hollow in Dallas.
The PGA Tour said on social media that Bensel’s back-to-back aces are the only such feat in a Tour-sanctioned event on record.
Bensel has played in six PGA Tour events and never made the cut. On Friday, he had a tough time at the seaside course. He opened the day at 4 over and had back-to-back bogeys to follow up his aces.
