If you saw the final day’s play at the recently concluded India Open, you would have seen how great a part luck plays in golf. Consistency, aggression, calm nerves, sound judgment — these attributes count. But finally, luck is the trump card that brings home the winning hand.Gaurav Ghei was playing superb golf and beginning to pose a serious challenge to the leader, Thailand’s Thaworn Wiratchant. He had an easy, short putt on the 14th hole to get within one stroke of Wiratchant, a putt he would make 99 times out of 100. He strikes the ball but it catches the right lip and bounces out. Nothing wrong with the putt, just bad luck! The next hole, he has another simple putt for a birdie, the kind of putt he had been sinking without sweat earlier in the day; but this time, he misses it by less than an inch. On the 16th, he rolls his putt dead on line and starts walking towards the hole to pick up the ball. But the ball defies gravity and hangs on the lip of the cup, refusing to drop in the hole!By now, Gaurav knows it is not his day and, having parred the 17th, puts his approach shot in a bad lie on the fringe of the green on the 18th. He plays his chip shot and cannot believe his luck as he watches the ball roll into the hole for a birdie. If he could do that from off the green, why could he not make those three putts earlier which would have made him the Open Champion? Ah, the sweet mysteries of golf!The history of golf is full of incidents where tournaments have been won or lost by good or bad luck shots. But nowhere does luck come so much in play as in a hole-in-one. You do not have to be a good player to achieve this feat; all you need is luck. Forty years of golfing did not bring me this distinction though I did hit the flagstick on occasion with the ball just stopping next to the hole. The Golf Nut’s Book of Amazing Feats And Records chronicles some really weird feats of holes-in-one like three generations of a family acing the same hole, an armless golfer scoring eight holes-in-one and a golfer hitting four objects en route to a hole-in-one!Any further proof required for the importance of luck in golf?
