Rare Bird Sightings

One Round, Two Albatrosses

Young Tom Morris recorded the first known double eagle, during the Open Championship at Prestwick in 1870,and some 1,700 golfers have gone on to record one of their own. Taking it a step further, 41 golfers have scored two double eagles over the years. But to jar two double eagles in a single round is a record that now only three golfers in the history of the game can claim.

On Saturday, September 3, Colorado Golf Club member David West became the third member of that oddsdefying group when he holed his 3-wood second shot on the par-5 seventh hole and then repeated the feat at the par-5 16th with an 8-iron. He joins Norman Manley and Patrick Wills as the only golfers to bag two albatrosses in a single round. West knows something about clutch shots. He’s the son of NBA legend Jerry West.

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A Rare Bird Sighting

Team DigitalGlobe could have used some of its company’s high-res satellite imagery during the Westminster Legacy Foundation’s August 18 scramble golf tournament at Legacy Ridge Golf Course. Trying to locate teammate Geoff Henson’s booming drive on the blind, uphill 301-yard, par-4 seventh hole, Henson and partners Mike Martinez and Brian Bliss combed the bunker and area around the green.

Then their fourth, Earlene Turnley, checked the hole. “Is this your ball?”

“The chills, the emotion,” Henson recounts. “It was pretty spectacular.”

It was also apparently unprecedented. According to the Colorado Golf Association and current and former Legacy Ridge personnel, nobody in the course’s 22-year history had ever recorded an ace on no. 7.

Currently a six handicap living in Windsor, Henson is DigitalGlobe’s manager of information delivery. He played Division II golf for the University of Southern Colorado, graduating in 1998. The hole-in-one is his second, “and,” he says, “to be honest, it balances out the first.”

That one came two years ago during a scramble at Harmony Club in Timnath. “The format had us playing different tees on each hole,” he remembers. “We were on the 15th, playing the red tees—the ladies’ tees—less than 100 yards out, and my boss hit one to two feet. ‘Beat that, Henson,’” he said. So, of course, I dunked it—and never heard the end of it. They gave me a bedazzled ball marker.”

So what did Henson’s albatross ace—a 6-million-to-one double eagle—earn him besides a bar tab and a place in history? First place for his team and a handshake from Westminster Mayor Herb Atchison.

Geoff Henson meets Westminster Mayor Herb Atchison after his ace on the 301-yard, par-4 7th at Legacy Ridge…

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This article appears in the Winter 2016 issue of Colorado AvidGolfer. Subscribe today!

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