Holden Drown was playing a Sunday afternoon round with his father when his tee shot bounced right, sailed over a hill and disappeared into the cup on the 27th hole at Elms Country Club in Massillon, Ohio. The 10-year-old third-grader from Wooster had just finished nine holes before stepping up to the 116-yard par-3 that capped his round with a hole-in-one.
Holden said he expected a nice hit on the green, not a shot that would find the bottom of the cup, according to WKRC. His father, Ben Drown, said the family screamed and agreed the moment was just plain cool. Ben Drown later registered the ace with the National Hole-in-One Registry, per a report from WJW.
The odds were not in Holden's favor going in. The National Hole-in-One Registry puts an average golfer's chance of making an ace at 1 in 12,500, and separate figures from PGA.com show that even a low-handicap player faces roughly 5,000-to-1 odds, with PGA Tour professionals sitting at about 3,000 to 1. Nationwide, an ace occurs roughly once every 3,500 rounds played, according to National Hole-in-One Registry data published by GolfPass.
A Course Built for the Moment
The layout at Elms Country Club made Holden's finish possible. The club, located in North Lawrence near Massillon, opened as a private facility in the late 1920s before becoming a public 27-hole venue in the mid-1960s, per course history from The Elms of Massillon. The property is arranged as three separate nine-hole layouts, and its shorter third nine ends with hole 27, a par-3, which is why a golfer wrapping up nine holes would finish his round with that particular tee shot.
Wooster sits roughly 25 to 30 miles west of Massillon, making the club a short regional drive across Wayne and Stark counties for the Drown family, according to regional mapping cited by Visit Canton.
Where Holden's Shot Fits Historically
Holden's ace does not approach the youngest-ever mark. Guinness World Records lists Christian Carpenter as the youngest male golfer to record a hole-in-one, aced in December 1999 at 4 years and 195 days old at Mountain View Golf Club in Hickory, North Carolina. Golf Digest record-tracking guidelines also note that for a hole-in-one to be considered for official national age records, it must occur on a course measuring at least 6,000 yards in total length, a threshold that separates short recreational courses from full regulation layouts.
Holden is not done chasing rare shots. He said afterward that he might try to make two holes-in-one, unfazed by the odds still stacked against him.
Part of a Growing Youth Golf Wave
Junior golf participation among players ages 6 to 17 reached nearly 4 million on-course players in 2025-2026, a 58% increase since 2019, according to National Golf Foundation data compiled by Drake and Birdie Golf. Separate National Golf Foundation figures reported by Axios found that 57% of on-course U.S. golfers are now under 50, a sign that golf's audience has been trending younger and more diverse for several years running. According to the National Golf Foundation, just under 4 million juniors played golf on a course in 2025, more than in any year since 2004 and a 58% increase since 2019.
For the Drown family, the statistics mattered less than the moment itself. A shot that beat odds of 12,500 to 1 turned an ordinary Sunday round into a story worth registering — and, for Holden, one worth trying to repeat.
