Amateur golfers dream of making a hole-in-one at least once in their lifetime. Many come oh, so close. But for Gary Hubler of Durant, it’s happened three times.
It had been 21 years since his last hole in one – a 185-yard par 3 on hole number eight at Wahkonsa Country Club in rural Durant – but this one came in a two-person best ball tournament at Stone Creek Country Club in Williamsburg on Monday, July 15.
Hubler connected for an albatross (double eagle) on the 227-yard par 4, hole number 16, from the red tees with his Titleist driver. “It rolled right up and in,” said witness Carol Garner of Bettendorf. The pair finished the day at 68, but it was Hubler’s “one” score that was the talk of the day.
He got involved in the Williamsburg tournament when invited by some friends and says he participates with Garner in an Eastern Iowa Golf League that involved eight other communities.
Hubler admits there are two key parts to hitting a hole-in-one, noting the first part is having some “skill” to hit the ball in the right direction, while the second part is “pure luck.”
“There’s definitely a lot of luck involved,” he said. “If you think about it, when you hit a ball 227 yards into a four-inch hole, you not only got to hit the ball well, but there’s some luck involved.”
Hubler had his first hole-in-one in 1990, connecting on a 204-yard par 3 at a golf course in Dysart near Waterloo, where he said he played for 31 years while teaching history, government and science as well as coaching baseball and basketball for Geneseo-Dysart before playing a role as a school principal.
Hubler started playing golf after graduating from Northeast Missouri when he and a friend, Phil Keese, were working on a new pipeline crossing Iowa. “We saw these people playing and we thought we should try it,” he said, noting they each bought half a set of clubs in hopes of learning how to play the game. “We had a lot of fun with golf over the years,” he said, noting his best score ever was a 70.
Hubler says his younger days were much kinder to his game, noting he was pretty much a par golfer then, even without any lessons, something he says he regrets.
“If I had to start over, I’d have taken lessons every year,” he said, noting the game changes as you grow older.
“To really be good at the game, you have to practice quite a bit and decide how much time you’re willing to take away from your family, because it does take 2-4 hours to play,” he said.
He was also a pretty good athlete in his high school days, especially on the basketball court, where Hubler helped Dinsdale to the Iowa state tournament twice and had a 31-game winning streak his senior year before losing in the sub state round.
Golfing now for 64 years, Hubler plays in a weekly outing with a group of eight to nine guys every Thursday at Wahkonsa, teeing off at noon. And as luck would have it, maybe there’s still another hole-in-one in that Titleist driver Hubler swings.