‘A good shot.’ 75-year-old mostly blind Hilton Head golfer hits his first hole in one
Most golfers go their entire lives without hitting a hole in one.
But Ralph Dupps, 75, remembers that his old football coach always said, “Even a blind hog can find an acorn every once in a while.”
Dupps, known to his friends as “Dupper,” felt the joy of that rare sports moment last week in a feat made more extraordinary because macular degeneration has robbed him of most of his vision.
Only 1-2% of golfers make a hole in one each year, according to the National Hole-In-One Registry, and the chances of that happening for an “average-skilled” player are about 1 in 12,000.
The retiree from Tennessee has lived in Sea Pines on Hilton Head Island for 31 years, he said, but has been visiting the area with his wife since 1964. When he’s not golfing — a sport he took up as a child because golfing was a “family thing” — he likes to fish. For 50 years, he also enjoyed hunting and flying planes.
With his sight declining, he can’t do what he once did, though. He can’t drive, for example. He can’t cross the street by himself.
“I can still see and won’t walk into walls, but it’s impossible to tell you what I can or cannot see,” Dupps said. “It depends on the sun and a lot of different things.”
With the help of many friends on the island, he’s been able to continue golfing.
“This town is full of good people,” he said.
One of those people is Don Furtado, who has been friends with Dupps for 30 years.
‘That was a good shot, but ...’
The two were playing the Bear Creek Golf Club course in Hilton Head Plantation last Thursday when they got to the 14th hole.
Like every other time when Dupps was preparing to hit, Furtado acted as his eyes — telling him the par 3 hole was 153 yards away, across a lagoon on a raised green. Sometimes, Furtado said, he even uses his club as a pointer to show Dupps where he should probably hit.
“I tell him the layout of the course, and he sort of internalizes it and takes it from there,” said Furtado, who didn’t pick up golfing until he was in his 60s.
Dupps stepped up and swung, hitting one of his new bright green balls, which he bought because they’re easier to see than the white ones.
“That was a good shot, Dupper, but I think you went over the green,” Furtado said, adding he saw the ball go right toward the pin, but he thought it had rolled over the knoll.
The pair sped their cart down to the green, immediately seeing Furtado’s ball. But they couldn’t find Dupps’.
“I had hit a club a little harder than normal because the wind was blowing pretty hard, and there was water around,” Dupps said.
They looked on the backside of the green, along the water, and just before Dupps was going to give up and drop a new ball to play, he turned to Furtado.
“Could it be in the hole?”
The two laughed. Furtado walked over and “there it was, staring at me,” he said.
They briefly celebrated before continuing to play.
Caught up in the moment and still a little shocked, Dupps didn’t think to set his hole-in-one ball aside and continued playing with it ... until he lost it.
“I thought, ‘Maybe I ought to save this ball,’ but on the next hole I decided to play it out and hooked it right into the woods,” Dupps laughed. “Some alligator is probably trying to digest it right now.”
Against the odds
Dupps’ rare achievement came just two days after Jeffrey Johnson of Marietta, Georgia, and Mike Long of Wellington, Florida, sank back-to-back holes in one on the 10th hole of The Sea Pines Resort’s Atlantic Dunes course on Hilton Head.
The odds are 17-million-to-one of two players in the same foursome making aces, like Johnson and Long did, with the odds of back-to-back aces even higher, according to the National Hole-In-One Registry.
Dupps isn’t letting his feat go to his head. “I’m kind of an average golfer,” he said. “Never a great golfer but an average golfer.”
Although he’s won tournaments, he’s remained humble about never having hit the cup on the first shot.
“Finally doing that is not going to change my life,” Dupps said, “but it was a lot of fun.”
