Jalen Suggs’ three-pointer will go into history as the shot of the tournament (assuming nothing crazier happens in the championship game). But for the Lunatic, Suggs’ half-court bank shot to beat UCLA was only the second best shot of the weekend.

Before the tournament, my good friend, David Zimmerman, reached out and asked if I wanted to go golfing over the next few weeks. We hadn’t seen each other since August (with our last golf adventure) and so we wanted to get together to do something fun. We agreed to play on Sunday.

So, Dave drove up from North Carolina, and I met him in Petersburg at a course called Dogwood Trace. It was a nice little municipal course in Petersburg, and it cut a decent 45 minutes off of the travel for Dave.

Neither of us was playing great – neither of us had played since that round in August and that might have been our only round of golf in 2020 as we both tried to stay in our bubbles with the pandemic happening. But it was all ok. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and we were getting the chance to catch up on everything in our lives and just have fun on the golf course. Perfect Sunday afternoon.

Anyways, we had our first bit of success on the 8th hole as Dave hit a nice drive up the left side of the fairway on a par 5, and hit a beautiful fairway wood to the fringe. His eagle putt from the fringe was just a little bit off – but ended up with a short putt to get his birdie. Considering both of us were posting double bogeys or worse on most holes, we were pretty happy the have a good hole.

So, we drive up to the 9th hole, a 166 yard par 3 over a small pond to a green sitting in front of the clubhouse. Dave hit his shot well but pushed it a little bit right of the green. And so I stepped up to tee. I thought to myself as I grabbed a club that I have not hit really anything solid all day and was pathetically already pretty sore. You might not really think of golf as a strenuous sport, but when you do very little exercise and simply keep yourself walled up in your house due to the pandemic, it is amazing what muscle aches you can find from swinging a golf club. And as I said, I was not playing well – I was swinging the club a lot….

So, not wanting to be short and end up in the pond, I grabbed a 5 iron to have a little extra club. I took a nice swing and watched as the ball nicely went into the air, flew over the pond, and landed on the front end of the green. Dave said, “Nice shot!” and we walked back to the cart not thinking anything else about it. We were simply chatting and laughing the way we always do as we play golf.

As we drove up closer to the hole, I was looking around to see where Dave’s ball ended up – mine was on the green so I figured I had a 10-15 foot birdie putt that I would miss horribly. And then Dave said, “Tommy, where’s your ball!” I turned towards the green, and he was right, we couldn’t see it anywhere. We kept looking at the front of the green where there was a little ridge on the green. For a second, both of us saw a white glimpse but it disappeared as we got closer to the hole.

So, we get out of the cart, walk up to the green, and we find the ball resting in the hole! I had hit my first ever hole in one!!!!!!! As any avid golfer, I had always dreamed of hitting a hole in one, but truth be told, I figured that now that I play only once in a while, that the chances of that dream coming true had past. I was so excited that I had Dave take some pictures of me taking the ball out of the hole and posted one of them to Facebook.

I then went back to hitting the ball wildly all over the course. Dave crushed me in our match for the mythical dollar – think he won 4 & 2. For me, on the scorecard in the final score was a 100 with multiple asterisks next to holes where Dave was nice enough to give me a mulligan – I probably shot 105 or 106 if we were really keeping an accurate total. But the only thing that mattered was under the 9th hole, where it had a 1 and two large circles.

The world is going to remember Jalen Suggs shot this weekend for a very long time – it will be etched in history as we see classic buzzer beaters of the tournament. But for me, the moment from this weekend that I will remember for the rest of my life is the 9th hole at Dogwood Trace golf course where my dream of hitting a hole in one came true. And even better, I was able to share it with one of my closest friends, David Zimmerman. I could not think of a more perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon.