Bruce sets Cosmo course on fire with rare ‘albatross’

Bruce first came to India in 2000 to build customer service and BPO centers. In 2008, he moved from Palm Beach, Florida, to Chennai. In 2015, he and his team launched a company which currently employs about 400 Chennaites. 

Bruce was a golf player by accident and he had started playing when he was in his 20s. “So I have been at it for some 40 years, and still never had any formal lessons. I just started playing by watching, and eventually got pretty good at it and even today, I watch a lot of golf on TV and do a lot of swing emulation,” said the American. 

In 2015, he was speaking at a seminar for physicians and met Major V Raghavan, an Army ophthalmic surgeon who invited him to join the group, which played the weekly round at Cosmopolitan. “It has become a regular event and one that I eagerly look forward to. I love life in Chennai, where I live, as a single man with my dog Karma. Having a dog and a regular weekly golf match with my buddies have always been two “happy life” ingredients for me, and along with having a great partner, a thriving business and excellent health, I consider myself a lucky man, indeed,” said Bruce. 

Before the competition on Saturday, Bruce did his warm-up wearing headphones and listening to Barry White. “So that is it. Barry White for warmups. Sure to be a regular thing,” commented Bruce. In the match at the Cosmo, Bruce was sharing a buggy with Major Rags, but was teamed in the four-ball with DIG Bala against Rags and Vinaykumar. “Everyone was playing well, and I was having a pretty solid day, with two birdies on the card, but on 16, the group behind us decided to play through us on 12 and created a bit of commotion and then I dumped my second shot into the bunker,” recounted Bruce. 

“I had been bombing my driver all day, but I got a little late on this one, and left it long, but so far right, I was in the 9th fairway, and nothing but tall trees stood between me and the green. My caddy, Appu, handed me a Callaway Five Metal (the club) and assured me I would do well. I absolutely crushed a towering draw, which started on a line right of the green, but we both lost track of it, but Appu assured me, it was good,” Bruce lived through his moments of joy. 

“When we got to the green, we couldn’t find my ball, and as I walked around in the rough near the green, when one of the other caddies shouted, ’in the hole’. Appu and I ran to the hole and sure enough, there it was in the cup. My buddies were all as equally thrilled as I, and we all realised it was a rare occasion indeed, and word quickly spread through our Whatsapp community,” explained the American. 

How about the celebration? “Next week, I am bringing a special bottle of Scotch. As my brother Steve Schwack suggested, I’m retiring the club and the ball and making a Trophy to mark the occasion. After all, how many times do you get to celebrate a double eagle? They say one in 13 million!,” concluded Bruce.

The double eagle, also known as an albatross, means a 2 on a par-5 or holing out a drive on a par-4. A recent study reveals there are four or five reports of double eagles a year. 

The study also took a survey and found 10 of the 15 players interviewed had made a hole-in-one, but not a single one had either made or witnessed a double eagle. The most-quoted odds of making a hole-in-one are 13,000 to 1. The odds of making a double eagle have been posted at 6-million-to-1, although some think it might be closer to 1 million to 1. 

One study a few years ago estimated there are about 40,000 aces made in the US every year, compared to about 200 double eagles. That is for comparison. Even a high handicapper can at least sometimes reach a par-3 in one shot, and with a little luck might roll one in. Nobody would admit it, but surely there have been some aces where a golfer hit a half-shank that happened to roll up, hit the rake next to a sand trap and find its way into the hole. But to just reach a par-5 in two takes a couple of very good shots and takes luck out of the picture. One study estimated that only 10 percent of all golfers are even capable of reaching a par-5 in two.