Hole in One

Between 1987 and 1996 there were 323 aces on the PGA Tour. There were 443 tournaments. One ace every 1.37 tournaments. There are approximately 2,367 par 3s played in 1.37 events. (144 players x 8 before cut, + 72 x 8 after the cut= 1,728 x 1.37). So the odds of a PGA pro making a hole-in-one on a single shot were roughly 1 in 2,367. Add to this that the ave. par 3 is much longer than 150, and many (maybe most) of these shots were played having somewhere other than the hole as the target, and all of these shots were played by players of lesser talent than Tiger Woods, and you begin to get an idea of his chances of making it from 150.

i am not a real good golfer and i would bet i can make one at 100 yards in 500 trys.

The probability of you making the 1st try I would think are worse than 500 to 1. The probability of you making the 10th try may be better than 500 to 1.

[BruceZ]

I just noticed an error in my 500-1 estimate below. The probability of getting the angle right must be doubled to 0.4% (actually 0.44%) since the 0.2% was for being within an inch on only one side. This would make my final result 80% * 0.44% = 0.35% or 1 in 284.

Again this assumes we miss by over 10 yards in either direction 5% of the time, and we miss the green 10% of the time. Changing the percentage for hitting the green or changing the left-right error yardage (not percentage) will change the result by approximately a proportional amount. What would these numbers be for you Ray?

It seems to me, you could do well to make guestmates based on:

How often you assume the player will hit the ball onto the green.

How much surface area the ball will "test" before comming to a stop.

How much surface area the entire green is.

How big the hole is.

Tiger would have one chance to get a hole-in-one on each hole that he plays.