Tara golfer beats the odds — twice

Tony Sciame awoke Nov. 10 with no indication it would be an interesting day.

The Tara Golf and Country Club resident was scheduled to play 18 holes at his community’s course. He likes playing, he said, but didn’t expect anything special. On the course’s 135-yard fourth hole, a par three, he swung like he always does.

I wouldn’t be writing this if Sciame finished with a par.

He aced the hole using a 5-iron. It was the 85-year-old’s first-ever hole-in-one.

“At my age, you kind of figure it won’t happen,” Sciame said of the experience. “It was a big surprise. I thought it was short, so I quit looking at it, but it just rolled into the hole.”

He was so shocked he forgot to keep the ball at the end of the round.

No problem. He would have another chance. The golf gods weren’t done with him.

“At my age, you kind of figure it won’t happen,” Sciame said of the experience. “It was a big surprise. I thought it was short, so I quit looking at it, but it just rolled into the hole.”

On Nov. 17, the same course, same hole, same club, same result.

“The second one was longer,” he said. “It landed on the green, but the hole is behind a corner, so I couldn’t see it (sink).”

Sink it did, though. Twice in seven days? You bet. He didn’t keep that ball, either.

When I heard Sciame’s story, I had one initial question: Are you kidding me?

According to the National Hole-in-One Registry, which is a real thing, the odds of an average golfer hitting a hole-in-one on any given hole are 12,000-to-one (Sciame joked that he was below average, so the odds were stacked even more against him). That means the odds of doing it twice in a lifetime are a lot longer.

I’m not smart enough to know how to factor in the aces occurring on the same hole, seven days apart, but it makes the odds approximately equal to my chances of marrying Taylor Swift.

Sciame’s fellow Tara golfers won’t let him hear the end of it, he said. “Hey, Tony, I hope you’re on my team!” they shout to him. It makes him feel good.

Sciame’s wife, Claire Sciame, is happy her husband’s aces are getting attention. Sciame himself could care less. Though he does admit the accomplishment feels good and is, by far, the coolest athletic feat of his life, Sciame said it was mostly luck.

Now that Sciame is the unofficial master of this hole, I asked him for tips to give others. He had a single one, and it’s a tip he’s used ever since he started playing golf at 63 years old in Rockford, Ill.

“I’ll tell you what I tell everybody else,” Sciame said. “You take the ball and put it on the tee. You grab your club. Then you shut your eyes and swing, and hope God is watching that ball. Between God and the ‘golf gods’ watching, you’ll get it done.”

If it works for the master, it works for me.