Date: December 08, 2015
Author: Mark Hayes

Lyle holes in one, twice

When it rains, it pours.

Jarrod Lyle made not one, but two holes-in-one today as part of the Challenge Charity golf day at Yarra Yarra Golf Club in Melbourne.

Hitting shots for each group as they play the famous Sandbelt course, Lyle knocked in a 9-iron on the 149m 15th hole shortly after 8am.

Not content with that, he followed with another around 1pm, this time with a wedge, joking on Twitter that he had made “another group very satisfied”.

Making his second hole-in-one even more memorable was the pressure heaped on him by the group involved.

Lyle, in fundraising mode, was taking bets that nobody in the group would hit one nearer the pin. One player in the group hit it to 2m, the next inside a metre, prompting what Lyle described as “a fair bit of lip”.

“They were giving it to me, then I just hit and it somehow weaved between their balls and went in – we couldn’t believe it,” Lyle said.

“It cost ‘em a few bucks, but they absolutely loved it!”

Lyle, who showed great signs of returning form last weekend in closing rounds of 72-72 to finish at T21 in the Australian PGA Championship, also had an ace in a practice round in the United States in mid-October.

He famously aced the “party hole” in the Phoenix Open in 2011 and had his first in Wales during a 2004 tournament.

Adding to the carnival feel at Yarra Yarra today, a third hole-in-one was fired on the same hole by a guest who won a greyhound for his efforts.

Lyle, himself coming back from a second life-threatening fight with leukaemia, has supported Challenge for more than a decade.

Since its inception in 1983, the charity has helped more than 25,000 children and their families fight cancer.