Steve Shaffer
Howie Tiger
The National Hole-In-One Registry website includes as one of its top-ten feats a player making four holes-in-one in one 12-month period. Steve Shaffer has a chance to better that record by doing it in one calendar year. The odds of an average golfer scoring a hole-in-one are estimated to be 12,000 to one. Making four in one calendar year cannot even be estimated!
Steve Shaffer, a member of the PebbleCreek Men’s Golf Association and the Golf Committee, has already recorded three holes-in-one in 2016. Unfortunately, none of them occurred in PCMGA events so he will not share in the hole-in-one pool that traditionally amounts to over $2,000.
His first hole-in-one was on April 15 on No. 17 at Eagle’s Nest where he used a 7-iron from 135 yards in a strong cross wind. He hit a good shot which the wind carried onto the green and into the hole in plain sight. The second was on July 27 on No. 8 Palms at Tuscany Falls where he used an 8-iron from 138 yards and saw the ball disappear. The third was on September 19 on No. 8 Falls (Tuscany Falls) where he used a 4-hybrid from 154 yards. Again on a very windy day he hit a good shot which disappeared into the clouds and was discovered in the hole when it couldn’t be found elsewhere.
All of his 2016 holes-in-one were witnessed by members of his regular PebbleCreek golf group, the “No Namers.” Steve now has six career holes-in-one! The others were in the Philadelphia area in 1995 at Blue Heron Pines near Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1998 during the Senior Club Championship at his former club, Commonwealth National and in 2011 at Center Square Golf Club.
Steve started golfing during his high school years in Philadelphia and continued playing regularly while attending Penn State and Temple Law School. After law school, he stopped as he was too busy with his legal career but resumed in the late 1980s and joined a club where he was on the Green Committee and Board of Governors. He is a frequent contributor to www.golfclubatlas.com, a golf architecture forum and has written articles for www.myphilygolf.com, a golf blog and Golf, Inc., a golf business magazine. As a golf architecture buff, he would like to redesign a few holes here at PebbleCreek.
Steve now has a few months to accomplish this amazing feat. May we suggest he play all day, every day until the end of 2016 to increase his chances!