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An Auckland father and son duo have defied unbelievable odds to produce one of the most remarkable moments of their lives by hitting consecutive aces while on a golfing holiday.
Jim Rohrstaff, a 46-year-old former club professional, had been traveling around Scotland with his wife Kara and sons Blake and Eric, playing at different courses along the way.
Last Saturday, they arrived at the historic Cullen Links and could not in a million years have anticipated what would happen next.
Rohrstaff and Blake, 18, made double bogeys at the seventh hole before walking up to the 255m (279-yard) par-four eighth.
'I hit driver and my ball actually landed just left of the green in the left rough, but it was a bit of a slope and it kicked right towards the green and that's all we saw,' Rohrstaff told the New Zealand Herald.
'We could see the green, but from 255m you don't see exactly where the ball is settling.'
Auckland father and son duo, Jim and Blake Rohrstaff (pictured), defied 17 million-to-one odds by making aces on consecutive shots
The pair could not believe that they'd each made hole-in-one on back-to-back shots
Blake stepped up next with his driver and told the group he was going to hit a 'a little bullet'.
'He hit his driver and it landed on the front left side of the green and kind of bounced, released and ran just past the pin and then it started to roll back a little bit, but again didn't really think much of it,' Jim Rohrstaff explained.
The group approached the green, but could only see the ball that had been hit by Rohrstaff's youngest son, Eric.
'I walk up, and I'm in the left rough, just above the bunker, and I look around for a second. It's wide open. I'm like, where the heck's my golf ball?' he told Golf.com.
'So I'm looking around a little bit, and because there's only one ball on the green, and I'm like, well, where the heck am I? I thought, you know, I'm either on the green or I'm here on the left side and got stuck in the rough.'
That's when Eric made an incredible discovery in the cup.
'Oh, well there are two here,' Eric said.
Rohrstaff was perplexed. The odds of two golfers making an ace on the same hole are 17million-to-one.
Rohrstaff says if he wasn't there to experience it, he wouldn't believe it
'He's like, there's two balls. And he wasn't excited at all. He's like, there's two balls right here. And we're like, "shut up".
'So of course, we go walking over there, Kara's got her phone out, and, I mean, I started hopping around like an idiot. And we just, we just kind of went nuts. And it was just, it was, and I'm still a bit shell-shocked.'
'That was my 11th hole in one. That's Blake's first one. I've obviously never had one on a par 4. So, I mean, it was just the silliest, most ridiculous thing I've ever seen, heard of or experienced on a golf course. It was nuts.'
Blake said it took him a while to 'connect the dots'.
'I heard Dad say there was a ball in there, and I thought it was just his. And he was like, "No, we're both in here." And I started going monkeys as well.'
The family continued the celebrations when they made it back to the clubhouse, with Rohrstaff admitting he had trouble sleeping that night while thinking about the rare event.
'I still can't get my head around it. It's the most insane thing I've ever heard of, and if I weren't there, I wouldn't believe it myself,' he said.
