Acing Consecutive Holes

Getting a hole-in-one is every golfer's dream.

Getting just one in a life time is something to brag about. So, what 72-year-old Paula Troell did last week is really off the charts. She got a hole-in-one at the Saddlebrook Executive Golf Club In Florida. And on the very next hole, she did it again.

With a smile from ear to ear, Troell tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith how on the fourth and fifth holes, she sunk the ball twice, each with one stroke.

She used a pitching wedge to ace the fourth hole. She says, "It was a 75-yard hole with wind in your face and the pin in the back."

And then, she and the other women she was playing a game of scramble with saw it go in. "It made a turn on the green and just went right in the hole," Troell recalls. "We all jumped around and hit hands, high-five everybody. We were just happy as anything and went on to the next hole."

Since with scramble everybody plays one ball and moves on, Troell says she was so excited she could not think much about her shot for the 123-yard fifth hole.

"I think my mind was numb," she says. "I was blank when I got up to the tee. I pulled the 3-wood. And hit the ball. It was a beautiful shot. Went up on the green and just made a little turn and went in the hole. And I said to my playing partner, 'Did that go in the hole?' and she said, 'Yeah, I think it did.' Since we were playing a scramble, I said, let's go up and see if it's in the hole and it was in the hole."

The 72-year-old retiree says nobody at the golf course believed she had aced two-holes-in-one.

Of the manager, she says, "He thought I was joking, I am sure. But he gave me two slips to fill out to authenticate my holes-in-one. When I filled them out, he realized it was true."

Troell has been golfing for 32 years but never before recorded a hole-in-one.

"They have me listed as 25 right now but I'm sure I'm nowhere near a 25. With bad knees - that's why I'm playing executive courses right now, I just can't hack the big ones."

The day before, she says, she went to the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy and had a free lesson with Scott Donnelley. She says, "Scott Donnelly did a great job of putting good thoughts in my head. I think that's what really helped."

So on one of herlucky holes at the Saddlebrook Executive Golf Club in the Villages, Fla., she demonstrated for The Early Show how she plays the game. Though, the ball did not go in the hole, it was a pretty good shot.

Golf Magazine has set the odds of two aces in one round at about
67-million-to-one. There are no known odds of aces on consecutive
holes.

Troell and her husband moved to Florida in 1986. She retired in 1991 and has spent much more time golfing.

Wednesdays is Ladies Day at the golf course, and Troell was scrambling with three other women she did not know.