91-year-old Belleville golfer scores her fourth hole-in-one — and doesn’t even see it

Neither knee, nor hip, nor chronic sciatica can stay 91-year-old Sylvia Kuzmik from the completion of her appointed rounds with the Yorktown senior women’s Monday morning golf league.

But the otherwise determined Belleville resident gave up pretty quickly on that tee shot she took on hole No. 7 back on July 11.

She hit the ball straight, but its trajectory was too low and its velocity too high for her to think it could stick the green. She turned her back on it.

“I saw it bounce at the apron and I was positive it was going to go over the back of the green,” Kuzmik said. “I turned and started walking back toward the cart. I didn’t watch.”

She missed what the others in her foursome didn’t: The ball caught the lip of the green, slowed as it rolled uphill and fell into the cup.

It was the fourth hole-in-one Kuzmik has hit since she turned 70. And it’s the third hole-in-one she had to hear about from her golfing partners.

The shot was witnessed by Rita Renner, Marilyn Bell and Fay McClennan.

“My first hole-in-one was in 1995 at Poughkeepsie, New York,” she said. “Then I had three (at Yorktown), on No. 4, No. 9 and now on No. 7. I’ve had four holes-in-one but only actually saw it go in the hole once.”

Her most recent ace came barely six months since a fall in her driveway on Jan. 19 left her with a fractured hip that required a metal rod and multiple screws to repair.

She had her left knee replaced in 1995. That was nothing, though — “I was back dancing within five weeks,” she said.

Getting back on the golf course after hip surgery took a little longer, so it’s no wonder she felt “a little off center” as she sized up the 110-yard hole No. 7.

She’s been further aggravated by some arthritis around two slipped discs in her lower back and an irritable sciatic nerve she says flairs up roughly every two years.

“It’s kind of funny, but with this arthritis I’ve been playing really crappy,” said Kuzmik, who will turn 92 on Sept. 11. “I haven’t had the energy to push off. When I got to that hole I said ‘darn it, let’s see if we can’t put a little more energy into this shot.’”

“The pin was about center, but that’s a tough hole since it’s along the lake and it’s slightly up hill.”

She swung a hybrid 5-wood to sink the shot that put her past her husband, Bernard, a scratch golfer who sank three holes-in-one during his playing days.

“Bernard was an excellent golfer and he taught me everything I know,” Sylvia said of her husband.

The former Sylvia Saul was born and raised in southern Illinois, just south of Chester. She married Bernard Kuzmik on June 1, 1946 and moved with him to New Jersey where each enjoyed lengthy careers with the same now-defunct pharmaceutical company.

The Kuzmik’s didn’t have children, so they spent most of their leisure time on the golf course. Sylvia was 23 when she started playing and has been hooked ever since.

“Bernard was really dedicated to golf and so was I. He would never practice, but he always helped me,” she said. “”I’d work eight hours in a day, come home and fix supper, then we’d go out and hit 200 balls a night.”

With a 12 handicap, Syliva Kuzmik became good enough to play competitively.

She was a three-time champion at Osiris Country Club in Walden, New York and once defeated 16 other Hudson River Golf Association club champions in that organization’s annual tournament.

“Then I turned 50 and we had tournaments for seniors. I won that I don’t know how many times,” she said with a chuckle.

Bernard was his wife’s coach and caddied until his death in 1991. Syliva sold their house and moved back to Belleville in 2003 to be closer to her two brothers, Wilbert Saul of East Alton, and Delmar Saul of Cahokia.

Even at 91 years old, Kuzmik isn’t close to being the oldest golfer to score an ace. In 2014, Gus Andreone, who remains the oldest certified PGA professional, hit his eighth hole-in-one since 1939 at the age of 103. He beat the previous known record set by 102-year-old Elsie McLean in 2007.

In 2001, Jake Paine, 3, holed out on a 66-yard California course to become the youngest player after to shoot a hole-in-one. Ten years later, 5-year-old Drew Gray, of Swansea, aced hole No. 5 at Yorktown.

Kuzmik continues to golf at Yorktown, a lighted par-3 course in east Belleville, on Monday mornings and Thursday nights. She says she meets friends frequently on weekends to play other “long courses” in the region.

How long she continues playing, she says, isn’t up to her.

“I’ll keep playing as long as I can walk,” she says.

What are the chances?

Francis Scheid, Ph.D., retired Chairman of Mathematics at Boston University, conducted a study for Golf Digest to estimate the chances of hitting a hole-in-on:

• For a professional tour player: 3,000 to 1
• For a player with a low-handicap (not specified): 5,000 to 1
• For an average player: 12,000 to 1
• For an average player on a holt 200-yards or greater: 150,000 to 1
• For two players in the same foursome aceing the same hole: 17 million to 1
• For one player making two holes-in-one in the same round: 67 million to 1

This story was originally published August 2, 2016 at 6:40 AM with the headline "91-year-old Belleville golfer scores her fourth hole-in-one — and doesn’t even see it."