AUBURN — Like many fathers and sons who like to golf, Bob and Ben McDonough spent Father’s Day at the golf course.
It’s been an annual tradition for some time that Ben and his younger brother Jonnie take their dad out golfing. Jonnie couldn’t make this year as he’s in physical assistant school in New York City, so it was Ben, Bob, and Linda, Bob’s wife and Ben’s mom, who went out to Martindale, where the family has been members for the past three years.
The family was enjoying a nice round of golf as the three made the turn on the back nine. They played the 10th hole, and then reached the par-3 11th hole. Bob took out his 5-iron on the 152-yard hole.
“I hit it pure,” Bob McDonough said. “I knew I hit it really well and hit it higher than normal. I just waited to see what happened after that. I knew it was at least on the green.”
The tee shot at the 11th hole at Martindale is a blind tee shot, so the threesome went down to the green, where Ben’s tee shot came up a little short. Bob scoured the area for his 1.68-inch, 336-dimple ball.
Ben, who has been receiving golf advice from his father all of his life, had a tip of his own for his father.
“I saw him hit off the tee and the flight of the ball was one of the best I’ve seen on that hole,” Ben said. “My eyes aren’t that great, so I didn’t see it land on the green. We got up there, I was short of the green, so I went up to my ball. He’s walking around the green, checking behind it. I didn’t want to say it off the tee, but it looked really good. So I was like, ‘You should check the hole.’ He did and it was in the hole.”
It was Bob’s first career hole-in-one. He said the 11th hole is so difficult that he’s usually happy taking a bogey and walking to the next hole.
The hole-in was was even sweeter that he did it with his family around him.
“I couldn’t picked a better time to have happened,” Bob said.
But somebody was missing. Jonnie. So with the powers of technology and some quick thinking during the chaos, Ben reached for his phone.
“I realized it when he was looking for his ball,” Ben said. “I think I realized it was a hole-in-one before him and I immediately Facetimed Jonnie. He normally doesn’t answer, but he was in the library and he answered the FaceTime. I knew immediately he had to see it.”
The two brothers learned the game from taking lessons at the old College Street Driving Range in Lewiston and through tips from their father. They played on and off as kids but started to appreciate the game more as they grew older.
“(There were) frustrating days because I was a kid, I was stubborn,” Ben said. “I would get frustrated with the game because it was a hard game. He still teaches me with the kinks in my swing. (He taught) me to have a good time on the course, playing the tournaments at (Paris Hill).”
After the quick family reunion they headed to the 12th tee where the golf gods got their revenge on Bob as he double bogeyed the hole. That double had some consequences in the friendly game Bob and Ben were having because the two ended up tying each other through 18 holes. Bob regained his composure on the 13th and played well after that.
The down side of recording a hole-in-one on Father’s Day? The switch from your son having to pay for post-round drinks to buying a round for the whole bar, which is one of the unwritten rules of the 253-year old game.
“That was well worth it,” Bob said. “It doesn’t happen too often and it wasn’t too expensive, there weren’t too many people in the bar.”
The two also have another father-son golf tradition during the summer: they team up to face family-friends Paul and Michael Butler. Ben and Michael went to school with each other, and the four have been having friendly competitions the past few years since Michael and Ben have been out of school.
The McDonough’s won last year’s match at Martindale.
The father-son competition brings back memories for Bob since he learned to love the game through going out and playing with a friend and his father.