Metro-east golfer shoots holes-in-one both left-handed and right-handed, a very rare feat
Bob Martintoni raced stock cars and ran an auto repair garage in Livingston for 30 plus years before retiring in 2010.
Then, he did what a lot of people do – he took up golf. Martintoni is hooked.
“I started playing golf when I got out of my business when I was 56 and now my wife and I and whoever plays with us,” he said. “We play five days a week if not six or seven, depending on if they got tournaments.”
And within six years of taking up the sport, Martintoni had sunk his first holes-in-one, both at Oak Brook Golf Club in Edwardsville.
One day in 2021, for reasons he cannot explain, he found he could no longer grip a golf club from his natural left side.
“All I know is one day I woke up and couldn’t hit the ball left-handed,” Martintoni said. “ I got up and we were playing and the next day I couldn’t hold the clubs and I couldn’t hit them anymore, so I struggled with that for a couple of months.”
So he adjusted and learned to swing from the right side.
“I said I’m just going to try to hit right-handed and, by golly, I was hitting the ball better right-handed than left-handed,” he said.
This time around – as a righty – it took Martintoni just two years to sink a hole in one.
On Aug. 17, Martintoni approached Oak Brook’s 158-yard hole No. 7 with a right-handed 5-wood. His tee-shot was long and straight and appeared to be headed straight for the hole when he and his wife, Delores, lost sight of the ball.
Golfing partner Virgil Rehkemper, who was already walking near the green, confirmed to the Martintonis what they suspected.
“ I said to Virgil, ‘Is there a ball in the hole up there?’ And he said ‘Yup, there it is,’” Martintoni said. “I said I’ll be darned. …”
The United States Golf Association maintains no official record on how many golfers have shot aces from both sides of the tee, but they confirm that the feat is very rare, with fewer than 10 known instances.
News accounts have recorded less than that.
In 2013, The Ledger newspaper in Lakeland, Florida, told the holes-in-one story of Norman White, who has aced holes from both sides of the tee. Titlist, the golf equipment manufacturer, reported in a 2022 release that Joe Hliboki, of Montvale, New Jersey, completed the feat on Oct. 29, 2022.
There are ambidextrous PGA professionals – like American Mac O’Grady and Australian Cam Davis – and, according to Golf Digest, actor Mark Wahlberg plays the fairways left-handed, but swings a putter from the right side.
But there is no available evidence that any of them have holes-in-one hitting both right- and left-handed.
Martintoni’s journey into golfing lore began on May 16, 2016, when he aced hole No. 11 at Oak Brook. A few months later, on Oct. 16, he dropped his second left-handed hole-in-one on Oak Brook No. 4.
On Aug. 16, 2023, the day before achieving the rarefied air of carding an ace from both sides, Martintoni’s tee-shot on No. 7 missed the cup by about 6 inches, he said.
“I was playing with my cousin (Kenny Martintoni) and I missed the same shot about 6 inches from going in and the next day I’m out there with my wife, it went in,” he said. “It was the same shot and this one rolled in.”
But Martintoni says he assigns nothing of special significance to his rare feat – not club selection, type of ball, or even the presence of Delores, with whom he plays nine to 16 holes of golf on most days.
No, he says, “It was luck.”
