On May 10, 2012, a beautiful day in Knoxville, Tennessee, I hit my first ace on the 11th hole at Willow Creek Golf Club. The setting was the Bearden High School Foundation Golf Classic, and my wife Patti and sons David III and Andy completed our foursome for the scramble. Even though it was only 149 yards to the hole, I chose a 5-iron, as I am just an occasional golfer whose prime goal is the hit the ball in the general direction of the green. Because there was a monetary prize for a "closest to the hole" competition as well as for a hole-in-one, Sam Balloff and Margaret Heins-Laning were official witnesses. I teed up the ball, a Titleist 2 with some mileage and dirt on it, about a half inch off the grass, wishing that I could smack it with a sand wedge as I had seen a course pro do on this hole a few years ago. Interestingly, the ball had a Reynolds Plantation logo stamped on it, with the word "plantation" misspelled. I have no idea where I got that ball! Maybe I got it about ten years ago from my late father-in-law Willis Lindsey of Washington, Georgia. There were no obstacles and a drop of about 30 feet to the hole. I was totally unaware of the premium for hitting a hole-in-one here, as the sign disclosing the amount had been blown over by the wind, which was from left to right at about 15 mph. I hit the ball with an average swing for me, and was amazed as the ball started out to the left but was corrected by the wind, landing about 15 feet in front of the hole and a little to the left, with some rightward motion still from the wind. My son David started yelling as the ball rolled straight into the pin and dropped.
Mr. Balloff, who was manning the green, strode out to the hole and looked down in disbelief to see the ball actually there. My boys attempted to tackle me in celebration, but I reminded them that I had just had surgery for a ruptured disc in my neck 8 weeks earlier, so they backed off for the moment. In fact, 2 days before the surgery, I had asked my neurosurgeon, Dr. William Reid (who was aware of my limited golf prowess), if the surgery would bring my handicap down to single digits. He declined to guarantee that outcome, saying that he would have the surgery himself if it could do that!

I was advised to save the ball, so I put it in my back pocket. The next time I sat down in the golf cart, it promptly ripped a hole in my pants. Fortunately, the pocket stayed intact so I still have the ball. After the requisite photos, I reverted to my usual erratic play, but we somehow managed to finish the scramble one under par, good for next-to-last. I'm not saying what the prize was, but I will say that it more than covered the cost of my contributions to the golf benefit, as well as the balls I distributed into the woods, marshes, poison ivy patches, and water hazards. I rapidly became locally famous, receiving many congratulatory messages, along with one that asked, "Who are you and what have you done with the real David Harris?"

I am now trying to figure out how to rupture another disc so that I can have another miraculous golf-improvement operation.