GEORGE Harland, a 72-year-old golfer who has been playing the sport for only six years, has shared in a family feat which bookmakers Coral rank as a twenty million to one shot.
Partnering his younger son Martin in the Ponteland club’s last “major” of the year, the Hazara, he landed a hole in one. Half an hour later George’s other son Tony, who lives in Cheshire and who was competing in the Leigh club’s “Turkey Trot”, also aced.
Coral’s PR director, Simon Clare, said: “This is an incredibly unlikely occurrence, it’s like being struck by lightning or winning the national lottery. We would offer something like twenty million to one against it without losing a minute’s sleep.”
Neither father nor son won their tournaments, but Tony said: “What a memory – it was spooky, crazy. Dad got off the course first and left a message on my mobile.
“When I rang him back I did not give him a chance to say anything before I gave him my news. So I got to tell him first even though he had done it before me.
“It was the first hole in one for both of us and because I’m 46 and dad is 72, at face value it looks as if I have beaten him to it, but that’s not the case.
“I have been playing golf for 15 years and he only held a golf club for the first time six years ago so I have to admit it, he’s the daddy!”
George, a 27-handicapper and a former member of Westerhope who retired as a disability service manager in the civil service 13 years ago, aced Ponteland’s 145-yard 15th with a three wood.
“I hit my drive high as normal but straight for once without my usual slice”, he said. “The flag was towards the right of the green and the breeze took it into the hole.
“None of us will ever forget when it happened because Martin was partnering me on his 45th birthday.”
Tony, 11 handicap, who played at Prudhoe before introducing his father to the sport at another former club, Westerhope, is a process engineer at a paper management plant who married a Manchester girl.
He holed the 130-yard seventh at Leigh with a nine-iron, the ball pitching two feet past the flag and spinning back into the hole.
A former pupil at Walbottle High School, Tony brought golf to the Harland family in the days when he was a four handicapper playing for Westerhope’s Hadrian League side.
George said: “I could see how much fun and enjoyment my son was getting from the sport, so one day I asked if I could caddy for him in a league match.
“I was immediately taken by the game. Tony is good at showing people how to play golf so here was me, at the age of 66, going down to the driving range at Parklands and putting a club in my hand for the first time. I loved it right from the start and Tony’s 14-year-old nephew, Liam, is a member of Ponteland where he plays golf with me and his uncle Martin.”
Former amateur footballer George, who has been presented with a hole-in-one tie by Ponteland, is finding dominoes a nice little earner.
He said: “One of the lads at the golf club says he might just as well create a standing order for me at his bank because I keep taking the money.” Yesterday, despite the pensions strike, George was able to have a Capital Gains Tax query answered to his total satisfaction by a productive 10-minute phone call to a tax office in Wales.
What strike? This guy is on a roll.
TIM TAYLOR
