Hugo Boss watches have analysed 12 months worth of golfing stats to calculate what makes the ideal conditions for a hole-in-one.
The fashion watch brand, which operates the Boss Watches H1Club which awards each and every hole-in-one scored within a competitive round of golf in the UK and Ireland, ploughed through the statistics gathered by partner and Europe’s largest golfing community, HowDidiDo.
The research concluded that a 52-year-old, 13-handicap male golfer standing on a 158-yard par-three 16th hole has the best chance of scoring a hole-in-one.
Between April and October, more than five million competitive rounds of golf were played at HowDidiDo clubs in the UK and Ireland – an increase of 3.7% on the previous.
During that time the Boss Watches H1Club, operated by Boss Watches’ UK distributor MGS Distribution, presented 2,291 limited edition watches, up 2.1% on the previous summer, to members of the more than 1,000 different golf clubs.
The vast majority, 90 per cent, went to male golfers, but ladies’ competitive rounds were up by 5.6% this year and the number of female golfers to win a Boss watch also increased by 3%.
Paula Oates, from Flackwell Heath, even managed to bag two watches this year – one for each wrist – after holing two aces at her home club, Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire.
The average age of a male hole-in-one scorer was 52, while the female average was 60.
The average handicap for golfers – male and female – was 13 and the average yardage of an ace was 158 yards. Among those aces was lucky landscaper Drew Lumsden who beat odds of 183 trillion-to-one with a staggering six holes-in-one in one year – including two par-fours at St Andrews, the home of golf. But Lumsden was not alone in nailing an albatross: in total, 31 golfers recorded their holes-in-one on par-four holes.
Since its launch in 2013, the Boss Watches H1Club has presented more than 7,200 watches – at a value of more than £1.6m – to golfers who have recorded a hole-in-one in a qualifying club competition.
No extra registration is required to participate in the Boss Watches promotion as all official club competitions are recorded on the HowDidiDo system, so holes-in-one are noted and automatically ratified by the golfer’s club.
