Phil's king of the aces
Phil Marmara had a hole-in-one, a hole in his pocket and a hangover to match. Only now is the true enormity of what he did sinking in. The 47-year-old freelance teaching professional had an inkling that his 'ace' - and albatross - on the fifth hole at the Macau Golf and Country Club was something out of the ordinary even for a feat that is at the best of times a 33,000-to-1 chance. He was, after all, playing the hardest hole on the course and it does, after all, happen to be a par four.
Only now is Marmara starting to realise that he has struck one of the longest holes-in-one ever. The Guinness Book of World Records recognises the longest dog-leg hole played in a single stroke as the 496-yard 17th hole at Teign Valley in Devon where Shaun Lynch holed out in 1995.
Although the distance has yet to be officially confirmed, the Macau club rates the fifth hole as 479 yards off the championship tees. By Marmara's calculations, when he fired his 'ace' two Monday's ago, the distance was 474 yards from where he played.
'It was a complete shot of a lifetime,' he said. 'I don't even class myself as a big hitter. My drives are normally in the 260 to 270 yard range. I'm pretty steady. I knew I'd got hold of it and there was a wind behind which helped. We spent three or four minutes looking for the ball. We even went over to the next fairway and we checked all the greenside bunkers. Eventually we gave up, but one of my playing partners, Raymond Cheng, said you might as well look in the hole.'
'I went over and there it was. And then I screamed,' added the British citizen of eclectic Turkish-Maltese-Irish origins. 'I still can't believe it.'
Marmara, who used a Callaway Hawk Eye Pro Series driver with a 10-degree loft, says he has been asked for proof of his feat by Titleist, the manufacturers of the Pro V1 ball he used.
However, he was still feeling a little light in the pocket after his achievement. 'That cost me a lot of money. I had to pay for two rounds of drinks; one in Macau and one in Hong Kong.'
