Who says lightning can’t strike twice?
For the second time in barely two weeks, a golfer has notched a hole-in-one on the seventh hole at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club.
Aces aren’t that rare, of course. But until 19-year-old Ethan Peters knocked his ball in the hole on #7 on Tuesday, Aug. 27, apparently no one else had ever managed the feat.
And the NOTL golf course has been around since 1875, so there’s been ample opportunity to make it so.
Then last Wednesday afternoon, Steven Brammer made 9/11 memorable for yet another reason.
Playing the yellow, forward tees with lifelong buddy David Couch, he aimed to “show off” and go over the trees to the lakeside green about 250 yards away.
Instead, he hit a low, screamer of a shot, “about six feet off the ground,” that found a gap in the forest and hurtled toward the green.
You can’t see the hole even from the forward tees so Brammer, 65, figured he probably had landed in the yawning bunker that guards the front of the green. Or worse, maybe in the lake.
The pin was in a nearly impossible spot, on the top tier of the two-level, undulating green, but when he and Couch got there, Brammer’s ball was nowhere to be found.
Couch had hit his second shot onto the green and just as Brammer was giving up on finding his ball, Couch checked the hole.
And that’s where he found Brammer’s Titleist #4, sitting pretty.
Cue the celebrating, which carried on once they finished the final two holes and reached the clubhouse.
He and his wife Dawn just moved to NOTL in May, joining Couch who’s been here for a few years.
Brammer is a social member of the golf club and spends some of his spare time sailing out of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in Toronto.
An actor by trade, mainly in TV and film, Brammer spent several summers in NOTL and even worked at the golf club for three years under pro Rick Hill in the mid-1970s.
He still has a red NOTL golf bag with his name embossed on it, a parting gift from Hill.
“Niagara-on-the-Lake was a lot different then,” said Brammer, who lived at the family’s summer home on Gate Street with his mom and three siblings.
Dad’s job was in Toronto and he would spend weekends in Niagara. He commuted and often took the Cayuga ferry from NOTL to Toronto.
When Brammer worked at the golf club, there was a problem with people stealing the flags off the greens at night.
“So, Rick Hill offered me a few extra bucks to come back to the club at the end of every day to collect the flags,” he recalled.
Not only that, “he gave me a golf cart to go home on. So, I was like a 14-year-old kid and I got a golf cart to drive around Niagara-on-the-Lake,” Brammer said.
“We just lived on Gate Street, so it wasn’t very far, but I got to go home in a golf cart and come back to work the next day in a golf cart, which was like, a kid’s dream.”
He hasn’t played the course since his fateful date with destiny last week but he finished his round strongly, with a couple of pars on the final two holes for a 2-over 38.
“I was so damn happy. I had no stress and I just kind of hit the ball and parred out afterward. But I made sure I put away the ball I got the hole-in-one with immediately.”
Golf results: Penny Green was winner of the nine-hole women’s league’s A flight competition for the Gretchen Ormston Memorial Trophy. She had a gross score of 91 over the two-day tourney. Flight B winner was Ellen Smith with a score of 116. Congratulations Ellen!
On Sept. 10, Linda Williams, with a net score of 33, won the Members Cup.
In last Thursday’s men’s league play, Ricky Watson again was the low shooter, with an even-par 36. Randy McCartney was the Stableford winner, with 22 points.
Other winners: Mike Mott (closest to the 150 on #1), Bill Jenkins (longest putt #2), A.J. Harlond (longest drive #3), and Patrick Craig (#4) and Tom Elliott (#9) were closest to the hole.
Craig won gross skins with birdies on #2 and #4, Watson took one for an eagle on #3 and Devon Neudorf’s birdie on #8 also won a skin. Net skins went to Doug Herder (#3), Noel Morris (#4) and Matt Hurlburt (#8).
