WHEN told by his playing partners that his tee shot on Duntryleague's 11th hole had found the cup, 81-year-old Ferdi Boers didn't mince his words in expressing his disbelief.
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"Bull shit."
One speedy, 160-metre ride in a golf cart later, he was delighted to stand corrected when he saw his ball resting at the bottom of the par 3's cup.
The well struck 5-wood, the undeniable highlight of the club's Wednesday stableford competition, delighted the 25-handicapper, who liked the look of the shot from the moment it left his club.
Not that he concerned himself with watching the ball's full path.
"It hit the green and I saw it run up and then I stopped looking," Boers said.
"I thought it would have run off the back and then one of my mates said, 'it's gone in the bloody hole'.
"I said 'bull shit', but it did."
The hole in one, worth five points in stableford competition off Boers's mark, helped him to a solid round of 38 points.
Remarkably, it was his third ace in competitive rounds in less than a decade, complementing one on Duntryleague's 17th hole "about three years ago" and another at Wentworth about five years before that, this one struck "with an 8-iron".
Those three efforts, along with a C-grade club championship won back in 2010, make for an impressive resume in the latter part of Boers's 50 years playing golf in Orange, the last 35 of which he's spent as a member of Duntryleague.
Since finishing up a lifelong career at Orange's Electrolux factory - he started as an apprentice at the Edward Street workshop in 1954 - Boers has also been a fixture in Duntryleague's Monday's senior and Saturday's open competitions.
He plays his Wednesday golf as part of a 20-strong contingent who, under the stewardship of club stalwart John Brennan, form a club-within-a-club of sorts, awarding their own self-funded prizes for the best rounds, holding social functions throughout the year, and generally giving each other stick that swings on a spectrum between playful and outright sledging.
With a hat-trick of aces after the age of 70, it's unlikely Boers' will be on the receiving end of too many jokes within the group.
Not that he's given up hope of enhancing his record. Asked if there's any more holes-in-one left in him, Boers replied, "I bloody hope so".