History? As easy as 1 – 2 – 3 … 4

BY JEFF BABINEAU, Golfweek News magazine   
         In a country that features more than 26 million golfers competing in a game that has produced myriad records and peculiarities through the centuries, a foursome in Florida might have produced a one-of-a-kind inside straight.
   Playing the 330-yard, par-4 15^th hole April 30 at World Woods Golf Club’s Pine Barrens Course in Brooksville, Fla., John Brooks, Ed Burney, Boyd Brown and Tom Stecker made a 1, a 2, a 3 and a 4.

That’s right.  Consider it golf’s version of a “Lawrence Welk,” sans the bubbles.

            The ace belonged to Brooks, golf coach at the University of North Florida, who initially figured the reason two couples were jumping up and down on the 15^th green was that he had driven into them, and not because his Titleist Pro V1 had just rolled into the cup.

            Burney, executive director of The First Tee of St. John’s Country, took care of the 2, knocking in a 12-foot putt for eagle after following Brooks’ lead and driving the green; Brown, one of Brooks’ former players at UNF, knocked a wedge to 8 foot from 50 yards and made an 8-foot putt for birdie 3; and Stecker, head pro at Marsh Creek in St. Augustine, completed the unlikely superfecta with a most impressive par – he had to hit his second shot left-handed from beneath a bush in a waste bunker, then got up-and-down from the fairway, canning a 6-footer.

            “I had driven ahead to apologize to the group in front of us, and a man tells me, ‘Apologize? Hell, you made it.  Your ball is in the hole,’” Brooks said.  “And it wasn’t until we all were on the green that we began to think, ‘Hey, if everybody makes his putt…’”