By: Mike Glesinger
If you play the lottery, your chances of winning the Mega Millions are about 1 in three-hundred million. It's a little better for Powerball, about 1 in two hundred ninety million. Your chances of a hole in one in golf, around 1 in 32,000 on a par 3 hole, but for a par 4 hole...try 1 in 6 million! Maybe Connor Weingart should buy a lottery ticket.
Connor is a 2011 graduate of Alliance High School and is currently employed with Butler Ag Equipment in Chadron. He played on the AHS golf team as a freshman and sophomore, then went out for Track his junior and senior year. In fact.. He is the Bulldog school record holder in the Shot Put at 54'1". He was also an All Western Conference football player. But Connor has always enjoyed playing golf ...mostly for fun with friends and family...and he plays in a lot of local tournaments around western Nebraska....but last week, while playing with his sister Kylan and her husband Trace Armstrong, Connor accomplished somthing very rare....a hole in one, on a par 4 hole.
The trio was playing at Ridgeview Country Club in Chadron, Connor says he was not having a good round coming up on Hole #5, 370 yards, with a dog-leg and a lot of trees to the right...."it's a kind of blind shot..."you don't really know what line to take". "So I got to the tee and hit it...and I said.."oh man, that's a pretty good line...and my brother in law said..."Shoot...you might have killed someone!" Connor says, "There was a group in front of us and we couldn't really see where they were". So then the fun begins......"We get up there and we're looking all around"...the group ahead of them and already teed off on the next hole, and they said, "Well, we heard somthing hit by the green...."so we're looking around and couldn't find anything"......"my Sister just walked up to the green as a joke"...."then all of a sudden she put her hands to her head and said..."Oh my God, Connor...it's in the hole! ... "I didn't believe her, so I walk up and sure enough, my yellow Callaway ball was sitting in the hole"! Connor says there was a large divot on the right hand side and there's a little hill..."the ball must have hit the top of the hill and just trickled right into the hole."
Connor says he can drive the ball 300 plus yards consistantly and that he is known to "hit the long ball". This is his first hole in one. He has come close on some par 3's and has made the green on some par 4's, but never a hole in one until now. The tradition has always been, if you get a hole in one, you buy a round of drinks in the clubhouse. Conner says he got off fairly cheap, because there were not a lot of people playing, but a couple friends came out to help him celebrate.
Connor says he hopes to keep playing golf for as long as the weather allows this year and this will be a life long..."One in a Million"...memory.
