Paul Chang narrates his hole-in-one over a phone call, and it’s all a bit of a puzzle. A milestone achieved, a curse broken, an immediate call to the parents? All things that happened. Forgetting two holes later about the feat? Also something that happened.
First there are the facts of the shot. It happened last week, Feb. 12, on the 16th hole at the Grand Reserve Golf Club in Puerto Rico, during the third and final round of Virginia’s season-opening Puerto Rico Classic. The flag waved 152 yards away, and the hole was playing downwind, “quite a bit,” Chang said.
Chang played a knockdown pitching wedge, swinging the club shorter and flighting the shot lower. He had birdied the hole in the first round, with a pitching wedge from 169 yards, hitting it to 20 feet, then making the putt. He had parred the hole in the second round, misjudging the wind and ending up in the bunker with a nine iron, but then splashing the ball out of the sand and tapping in.
This go-around felt pretty similar. After his pre-shot routine, the same one that had never before yielded a hole-in-one, Chang swung.
He had aimed 10 feet left of the hole. The wind pushed the little spinning orb toward immortality. Dunk. The ball hit the back of the cup and went straight in.
“It worked out perfectly as I imagined in my head,” Chang said.
Chang dropped his club, sort of jettisoned it to his left. If he had a caddy, he would have chest-bumped him. Alas. His only companions on the tee were his playing partners from Marquette and Tennessee, and a Marquette assistant coach. Everyone high-fived. Chang seemed happy, but in his own way.
“It wasn’t the reaction I was thinking he was gonna give us, for his first hole-in-one,” Marquette’s Johan Widal, one member of the threesome, said.
The shot snapped a five-year hole-in-one drought for the Virginia program — and a lifetime drought for the player. Chang had come close to an ace a couple times before. The ball, though, had never dropped.
“I didn’t know how to react,” Chang said. “I never thought I’d actually make a hole-in-one. I’ve never had one. It was kind of a curse.”
This is where, it seems odd to say, there comes something bordering on ambivalence. Chang downplays it, on the one hand.
“At the end of the day, it’s just an eagle,” Chang said. “On the scorecard, it’s an eagle. It’s no different from making an eagle on a par five.”
There’s that. Then there’s this.
“But obviously it’s cooler,” Chang said, continuing. “People say it’s cooler. It’s less probable than making an eagle on a par five. So I’ll definitely remember it.”
It will go up there alongside his shot from the fairway in the 2023 U.S. Amateur Round of 16. That shot, until last week, had been his only ever hole-out from any sort of distance, including in non-competition rounds.
It also dunked, though after a bounce. It also came off the face of a pitching wedge. Chang did get to chest-bump his caddy that time.
This time, though, nobody else on his team witnessed the shot. Junior Ben James was closest, on the next tee, blocked from view by a bush.
But coaches, walking around this slice of paradise, were watching the leaderboard. Players, too. Chang encountered James in a logjam on the second tee — the tournament used a shotgun format, with Chang’s and James’s groups starting on the seventh and eighth hole and then wrapping around — and received congratulations.
But that was later. When Chang reached the 18th hole, two holes after the ace, the news was still filtering around. Chang’s group waited forever on the tee. Then Chang missed his drive into the right rough, the ball’s landing spot offering a decent shot through some trees.
Walking over to his ball, Chang passed a coach from Marquette. The coach did the natural thing — running across someone not 30 minutes removed from a feat mostly only dream of, he offered congratulations. Cue instant confusion.
“I was like, ‘You mean, I have this gap in the trees so I could go for a green?’” Chang said. “I was so lost.”
Then came assistant coach Dustin Groves, running toward him down the hole, opening his arms, “first ever!” And finally it hit Chang.
“I finally realized he was talking about the hole-in-one,” Chang said.
Chang called his parents after the round. They were happy he finally made an ace but more happy that he finished well in the tournament.
Chang, a computer science major from China who walked onto the team last season as a junior, tied for sixth at 10-under, five strokes behind the champion. He posted the best score on a seventh-ranked Virginia team that struggled, finishing seventh out of 15 in a strong but not overwhelming field.
Chang, at least, feels great. He wishes a few putts lipped in instead of out. Otherwise, no complaints. His game has never felt better. His bank account, though, may take a hit.
“I’m sure this weekend, or maybe the next, I’ll buy some people some drinks,” Chang said, as is custom after a hole-in-one.
He stowed the hole-in-one ball in his bag after the shot and, as of Friday’s practice, it was still there. He will frame it at some point, he says.
If, that is, he does not forget.
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