Hole-in-One Earns Golfer $25,000

“My ball striking was a little off today, so I smoothed out my tempo on that shot and it never left the pin,” Asbell said. “My brother is here this week, and my dad was up at the green and watched it go in the hole. That makes it more special than anything, that they were able to witness that moment.”

Asbell’s ace is preceded by the hole-in-one of Logan Watts, a PGA Apprentice at the Louisville Country Club in Kentucky. Watts sank his own hole-in-one during the 2013 National Car Rental PGA Assistant Championship’s opening round.

Though the pros might make it look it easy, a hole-in-one is an incredible achievement for just about anyone. As Golf Digest reported last year, a professional golfer’s odds of making a hole in one are 2,500 to one. For an amateur golfer, those odds suddenly leap to an astounding 12,500 to one.

Considering the unlikely probabilities, it’s no wonder why golf tournaments are willing to offer such fabulous prizes, like the $25,000 sum Asbell recently won, for hole-in-one competitions.

“For the Club Pros making a hole-in-one, their odds are roughly three times better than an amateur golfer. So, when a tournament contacts us regarding offering a hole-in-one prize, it’s important for us to know whether they are amateur golfers, Club Pros or Touring Pros. That way we can price our contract fee accordingly to the skill level of the players in the tournament,” says David C. Nelson, President of Hole-in-One USA. “One of the main reasons tournaments offer hole-in-one prizes at their events is because they can offer exciting prizes for only a nominal fee. That is why hole-in-one prizes are so popular for most tournaments.”

Though the odds may be great, there are still some 150,000 aces made every year from an estimated 490 million rounds of golf. With enough practice, maybe you can get the luck it takes to ace a shot and earn yourself thousands and thousands of dollars.