Making a hole-in-one is pretty cool.
Getting two of them in the same round is crazy.
Having them come in a span of four holes is totally wild.
That’s just what happened to Blade Kurilich. Yep, Blade, that’s his real name. His club of choice for his pair of aces was a 9-iron.
“That club will be getting framed once I get a new set,” he joked after his round.
Kurilich was playing Sterling Grove Golf & Country Club in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, Arizona, earlier this week with his regular crew. His first hole-in-one came on the third hole, where he did his best Michael Block PGA Championship impression.
“I hit just a stock 9-iron and actually dunked it straight in the hole on the fly,” he said. “I didn’t know it at the time but heard the pin rattle from the tee box. When I got up there I saw where the ball actually took a chunk out of the cup before I saw the ball in the hole.”
Four holes later, Kurilich was on the seventh tee box, again holding his 9-iron. The hole measured 172 yards but it was downwind.
“I couldn’t see that one in either over the ridge. So for both hole-in-ones I had to check the cup to be certain,” he said.
The National Hole-in-One Registry reports that the odds of an average golfer making an ace are 12,000-to-1. Kurilich says he’s a +2.4 so the odds for a golfer like him is 5,000-to-1. But this two ace thing is the real longshot, as the odds of a player making two holes-in-one in the same round are 67 million to 1.
A former baseball player who only started playing about five years ago, Kurilich had never had a hole-in-one before he got these two.
“After my second hole-in-one I had promised my buddy driving up to the green that if that one was in too, I’d dive in the lake,” he said. “Well I had to keep up on that promise and dove right in. My game went completely in the tank after that second one.”
Kurilich worked in finance in Denver but moved to Scottsdale recently with his fiancee to chase his dream of professional golf.
