Huschka calls his first hole-in-one

When Chad Huschka and several of his buddies came to the par-3 fifth hole at the Washington Golf and Country Club while playing on the Fourth of July, one of his friends jokingly proposed that they all hit driver off the tee of the 145-yard hole.

Huschka wanted nothing to do with that.

?I said, ?No, I?ve got my 6-iron. I?m going to put it in the hole,?? he said.

After calling his shot, Huschka hit his ball to the right. He didn?t think it was going to be a very good shot, so he bent over to pick up his tee.

?I really didn?t think it was going to stay on the green,? Huschka said. ?I thought it was going far enough right where it was going to kick off the green.?

Instead, the ball kicked off a hump on the right side of the green. When Huschka looked up, the ball was rolling left toward the pin. Then he, Randy Pierce, Trevor Martin, Doug Craff and Dale Sayre watched as the ball, a Titleist Pro V1, dropped out of sight.

?We?re watching it roll left, and it drops right into the hole,? he said.

Call it confidence or just luck, but Huschka predicted the hole-in-one.

?I was joking,? he said. ?I?ve called it before, and it never happened. It was one of those fluke moments.?

In the celebration, Huschka lost the tee that he had bent over to pick up.

?I threw the tee and threw the club up,? he said. ?I was pretty excited. It was the very first one I?ve ever had.?

He?d been close before, coming up three inches short on the par-3 second hole at the Washington Golf and Country Club in the past. And he?s actually come close to duplicating his feat on the fifth hole.

?A funny story: two weeks after that, on the same hole in roughly the same pin placement, I said, ?I?m going to put it in.? It was the same shot,? Huschka said. ?It did the same roll and everything. We?re watching, and my heart started beating that time. I?m thinking, ?No way. Two times?? But it ended up about four inches from the cup.?

Huschka, 35, can often be found playing at the Washington Golf and Country Club.

?I play as often as I possibly can,? he said. ?I?m out here all the time. There?s no once or twice a week. If I can do it three or four or five times a week, I?m out here.?

Not for long, unfortunately. Huschka goes in for surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder on Monday, ending his golf season for the rest of the year.

?It was kind of one of those blessings, like here?s your hole-in-one, now you don?t get to golf for a while,? he said.