So many great lines about the game of golf. It’s a four-letter word. It’s “flog” spelled backwards. Paul Harvey allegedly said, “Golf is a game in which you yell fore, shoot six, and write down five”. The list of great golf lines and anecdotes go on and on.
And then there’s the hole-in-one. For weekend hackers, it’s golf’s holy grail, something to talk or brag about. So meet Daniel Young. He runs Young’s Fish Market, but nowadays he might be better known as that guy who’s made six holes-in-one over the past year. SIX… Most people never make one, and he’s done it six times in 12-months! Oh, and two aces were on par 4s at Oahu Country Club (#10 and #17)!!
Ask him to what he attributes these amazing feats, and he’ll tell you “mostly luck”. True dat. Like most golfers, Daniel picks his weapon of choice, takes into account the wind, slope, and his hole history, and elegantly strikes the ball, hoping that it lands on the green. As a one-handicap golfer, often his ball does land there, and every couple of months this past year, his tee shot has ended up in the hole.
The odds of a low handicap golfer scoring a hole-in-one is estimated at 5,000 to 1; it’s 12,500 to 1 for an average hacker. If you play 25 rounds annually for 40-years, you apparently have a 20% chance of acing a hole.
But back to Daniel. Tougher than a hole-in-one (it seems) for his family was simply keeping the family business going during COVID. Catering, which represented 30% of Young’s business, became “basically non-existent”. Even today, Daniel estimates that 20% of scheduled catering jobs get canceled due to last-minute COVID problems. But much like on the golf course, he focuses and perseveres. He took over this third generation family business eight years ago when his beloved proprietor father, Alan, passed away unexpectedly in Japan while on a rare vacation.
Daniel and dad took up golf while Daniel was at Kailua H.S. He’s simply a recreational player, at work by 6am daily, who plays maybe three rounds weekly. Odds of getting six holes-in-one in one year? I looked it up, tried an abacus, and even spoke with the National Hole-In-One Registry; apparently such stats don’t exist. But this amazing feat shouldn’t go unnoticed or unmentioned. Daniel will be the fore-man fore-ver.
Think about it…