How these Texas pastors pulled off one of golf’s rarest feats

It was seemingly just another round of golf for David Shivers and Connor Bales, both pastors at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Tex. Filling out their foursome at Bent Tree Country Club, in Dallas, on a pleasant day last month was a third pastor, Scott Seal, and friend Jay Young.

Then the group arrived on the tee at the 8th, a 181-yard par-3.

Bales stepped in first. 

Six-iron. 

“He just flushes it,” Shivers recalled the other day. “He hit it so good, he yelled, ‘Go in the hole,’ and we anticipated it, two bounces, and then it disappeared.”

Praise be!

Seal was up next. Bunker. And then it was Shivers’ turn.

Six-iron again. 

“Connor’s was a slight draw, and mine was a slight fade,” Shivers said. “I hammered it. Thought it would be long. But with the wind and elevation, it took two bounces and…”

…well, it was hard to say with certainty. But the ball appeared to have bounded through the green.   

After Young’s tee shot, which also found the sand, the golfers giddily piled into their carts and motored to the green to celebrate Bales’ ace. As they neared the hole, though, they were surprised to find not one but two ball marks that, along with the cup, formed the points of a triangle. The Holy Trinity, they joked. 

More surprising still was the location of Shivers’ ball: cozied up to Bales’ in the bottom of the hole.

“It was pretty shocking,” Shivers recalled.    

A one-in-million shot?

Not even close. 

According to the National Hole-In-One Association, the odds of two amateurs in the same foursome making a hole-in-one on the same hole are 26 million-to-1.

Praise be!