MyTurn
by JIM DUCIBELLA
Lee Claude–Timeless
Ace Maker
If you knew you were going to be
served something creamy, velvety,
buttery smooth, lighter than air,
awesome to behold, you’d skip dinner
and jump to dessert, right?
At Hermitage Country Club, this special
delicacy has nothing to do with food.
The treat is watching Lee Claude swing
a golf club.
No reservation necessary. Claude can be
found at Hermitage about 240 days a year,
effortlessly launching majestic shots, virtually
all of which travel exactly where he
desires. The man who taught himself how
to play by emulating Sam Snead graduated
from that class with high honors.
“His body looks like a feather dancing
on top of the grass,” is how Craig Callens,
head professional at Hermitage, describes
Claude. “We’ve got all these great golfers
here, but his motion is the most pure we
have. You have to see it to understand how
simple it is, but the clubhead moves, unrestricted,
down the target line. It’s beautiful,
absolutely beautiful to watch.”
On a scalding hot day in mid-July, that
beauty was on full display. Claude played
the first seven holes of the Sabot Course in
1-under-par before the blistering heat and
humidity drove his group from the course.
Claude doesn’t carry a handicap. He hasn’t
played a full 18 holes in five years. That’s not
a knock. After all, he is 90 years old.
That’s right. Ninety.
Tall as a statue, slim as a reed, tough
as rebar, a dedicated exerciser who walks
on his treadmill and lifts weights nightly,
Claude has logged thousands of rounds at
more than 400 courses world-wide: Jamaica,
Grenada, Scotland, Ireland, Canada,
Bermuda and the United States. Heck, he
has literally played one-third of the nearly
320 golf courses in Virginia during his 65
years in the game.
They’ve not all been for fun. Claude
captured several club championships at
Richmond Country Club, a senior club
championship at Hermitage and a Richmond
senior Four-Ball title with partner
Craig Callahan. Otherwise, he likely
would have played in relative obscurity
if not for a Guinness-type achievement
earlier this summer.
Using a 7-iron, on May 31, Claude made
a hole-in-one on the Sabot’s 148-yard
11th hole. Five days later, his wedge shot
on the Sabot’s 132-yard fourth hole flew
straight into the cup. Twenty-four hours
later, his attempt for a third ace in six days
teetered on the lip of the cup but stayed
above ground.
Tough luck, but you know what they
say: The 10th ace is always the hardest.
Yep, Claude now has nine—five at Hermitage,
three at Richmond CC and one
at the now-defunct Lake Wright course
in Norfolk.
You don’t have to look far to find a smorgasbord
of statistics on holes-in-one. Boston
University mathematician Francis Scheid,
Ph.D., calculated that the odds of an amateur
making one is 12,500 to 1. A low handicapper
obviously fares better at a mere 5,000 to 1.
(To make the odds 1:1, Scheid estimated that
you’d have to play 100 rounds a year for 50
years. And that’s to make just one.)
According to the National Hole-in-One
Registry, the average distance is 147 yards,
so Claude’s last two aces hit that mark. The
All nine of Lee Claude’s aces
have been recorded at VSGA
member clubs.
Registry says the average golfer doesn’t make
an ace until he’s been playing for 24 years.
Claude is a bit precocious in that regard. His
father invited him to play in 1955, not long
after Lee was discharged from the Air Force.
His first ace came in 1971, just 16 years later.
Amazing as it is, Claude isn’t even close
to claiming any sort of record. The oldest
man to make an ace was 101 at the time.
Nick Sika of Pennsylvania made four aces
in a 30-day period. The Registry doesn’t
provide a name, but the individual record
for most holes-in-one is 26.
Nearly 80,000 golfers have submitted
claims for hole-in-one certificates. Claude
has his own way of marking the occasion—
at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
After No. 8, Claude’s daughter Bevan
ordered a new license plate for him: 8HOLSN1.
Less than a week later, Claude found a DMV
open despite the pandemic and went to have
the plate altered to reflect his latest ace.
Too late, he was told. You can order
another new tag but you’ll have to display
8HOLSN1 until it comes in. Once it arrived,
he quickly swapped out one tag for the other.
The question is, how long will it be before
Claude is back at the DMV, turning in
9HOLSN1? Only a fool would say never.
CHRIS LANG
40
V IRGINIA G OLFER | S EPTEMBER/O CTOBER 2020
vsga.org