Ray Kelly has played Lomas Santa Fe Executive Golf Course nearly every week for years, and on July 16, the 71-year-old Carmel Valley resident did something almost no golfer, amateur or professional, ever manages: he hit two holes-in-one in the same round. His first ace came on hole #5, and twelve holes later he did it again on hole #17.
The feat, first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, carries staggering odds. According to the National Hole-in-One Registry, the chance of any golfer recording two aces in a single round is 67 million to one. Kelly was playing with Craig Koehler and Niall White that day, and both holes came at the same Solana Beach course he golfs weekly.
A Short Course Built for Aces, But Still a Once-in-a-Lifetime Feat
Lomas Santa Fe Executive Golf Course, designed by William Bell and opened in 1973, is an 18-hole, par-56 executive layout that measures 2,431 yards, according to SolanaBeach.com. Unlike a standard par-72 course with only four par-3 holes, this layout packs in 16 par-3s and just two par-4s, giving golfers far more chances at an ace on any given round. Kelly's first hole-in-one came on hole #5, which plays 105 yards from the back blue tees, while his second landed on hole #17, a 127-yard par-3, per official scorecard specs cited by 18Birdies.
Even with those favorable odds baked into a short course, the numbers remain daunting for any recreational player. The average amateur golfer's odds of even a single hole-in-one sit around 12,500 to 1, compared to roughly 3,000 to 1 for a PGA Tour professional, according to the PGA. Nationally, an ace occurs only once in every 3,500 rounds played, and golfers between the ages of 50 and 59 account for the largest share of annual holes-in-one at 25 percent, per data cited by GolfPass.
A Family Proud of a Late-Career Milestone
Kelly texted his family right after the round, and the reaction was immediate. His son-in-law, David Randleman, said the whole family is proud of Kelly, adding that he has accomplished something amazing. Kelly and his wife, Mary, raised three children — Kate, Ryan and Liam — all of whom graduated from Torrey Pines High School. Ray and Mary have lived in the same Carmel Valley home for more than 30 years.
Kelly's path to this milestone was decades in the making, though not always on a golf course. Before settling into a long career at Science Applications International Corporation, the San Diego-based defense and technology firm founded in 1969 by Dr. J. Robert Beyster, according to the San Diego Foundation, Kelly was a gymnast on the South African national men's team. He trained across all six gymnastics events with an eye toward competing at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but South Africa was barred from that Olympics due to its apartheid policy of racial segregation — a ban that, per Olympics.com, kept the country out of the Games from 1964 until its return in Barcelona in 1992. Kelly worked at SAIC for 30 years before retiring in 2019.
Rare Company Among Even the Pros
Kelly's double ace puts him in exceptionally rare company. In the entire history of the PGA Tour, only three golfers have ever recorded two holes-in-one in a single round: amateur Bill Whedon in 1955, Yusaku Miyazato in 2006, and Brian Harman in 2015, according to the PGA Tour's own archives. On the international stage, Dale Whitnell became just the second player in DP World Tour history to do it when he aced the 2nd and 12th holes at the Investec South African Open in February 2025.
Whatever the celebration looked like at the clubhouse, tradition may have played a part. Golf custom dating back to 1921 holds that a player who cards a hole-in-one buys a round of drinks for playing partners and clubhouse guests, a habit common enough that some clubs and insurers now offer hole-in-one insurance to cover the tab, according to Golf Digest. To make it official, golf registry standards require a player to complete at least a nine-hole round under official rules and submit a scorecard signed and attested by playing partners, per GolfPass — a formality Kelly's round with Koehler and White would have satisfied twice over.
