SNOHOMISH — Stan Wetzel of Snohomish was playing golf with some buddies last month, as he does six mornings a week for most of the year.
On the 16th tee at Kenwanda Golf Course, Wetzel used a 5-iron on the 145-yard, par-3 hole. The ball was right on target, but then disappeared as it dropped
down a hill to a hidden green.
As the group approached the hole, Wetzel’s ball was nowhere to be seen. Finally Lou Fairbairn of Snohomish, one of Wetzel’s playing partners, told him to check the cup.
“He didn’t want to, but we finally forced him to go look,” Fairbairn recalled. “We knew it was the only place it could be. And sure enough, there it was.”
And at that point, someone in the group had the temerity to say, “Again!”
Yep, the 76-year-old Wetzel had just scored his ninth hole-in-one, a total that no doubt tops several players on the PGA Tour. He got his first hole-in-one in 1988, so all nine have come in the past 23 years.
And all nine have also come at Kenwanda where Wetzel usually plays. Remarkably, six were on the 16th hole. He has also aced the 121-yard sixth hole, the 191-yard eighth hole and the 172-yard 13th hole.
“Don’t ask me why they go in,” Wetzel said with a shrug, “because I don’t know.”
He has a 12 handicap, which makes him a good golfer, but hardly exceptional. His lowest handicap was a 7 about three years ago.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said, trying to explain his knack for making tee shots go in the hole. “I have a tendency to hit real accurate shots on occasion, but other times they’re just average, just ordinary.”
Every hole-in-one is thrilling, of course, although by now the novelty has worn off just a bit, Wetzel admitted.
“I don’t jump around anymore when they go in,” he said. “But it’s still surprising to me when it’s in the cup. Because all these others guys (in his regular morning group), they’re playing six days a week, too.”
Fairbairn, for one, has noticed the disparity. He is a good golfer, too, but has just one hole-in-one. And others in the group are still waiting.
“We’re definitely not disappointed for him,” Fairbairn said with a chuckle, “but we would like him to share a little more.”
“The other guys all say, ‘When’s it going to be my turn?'” laughed Vicki Creighton, who owns Kenwanda with her husband Curtis Creighton.
Wetzel first starting playing at Kenwanda when the course opened in 1962. Back then he was a once-a-week player, but over time — and as he got more serious about retirement from his career as a carpenter — he started playing more and more.
He still takes Sundays off, but the other six days he is usually at the golf course. Weather is rarely an issue, because Wetzel considers rain and even snow to be flimsy reasons for skipping golf.
“Stan plays no matter what the weather’s like,” Fairbairn said. “If it’s raining, I can’t pack it in because he still wants to play. We’ll even find a place to play that doesn’t have snow. It might be Kayak Point, it might be Jefferson in Seattle. We’ve even played Snohomish when it’s iced over.”
Wetzel explains his passion this way. Golf is not only fun, “it’s exercise,” he said. “When you get to be my age and if you don’t exercise, you’re not going to be around very long. I don’t know if you have to exercise every day like I do, but it sure doesn’t hurt.”
For Wetzel, golf is also a good social activity and a chance to compete. And, he said, “I love to compete.”
Does he ever, Fairbairn confirmed. More than that, added his friend, Wetzel loves to win. And on days that he does, he usually ends up with some spare change in his pocket.
“He religiously takes our money,” Fairbairn groused good-naturedly. “We usually give him a little garbage about picking our pocket. … But he hates to lose a quarter. And a big victory for one of us is when we get one of Stan’s quarters at the end of the day.”
Wetzel has no plans to give up golf anytime soon. Not surprising, since golfing longevity runs in the family. His father, Lewis Wetzel, played the game until he was 98, and then died about a year later.
Stan Wetzel played football, basketball and baseball, among other sports, as a younger man. But golf, he said, “is the one thing you can keep doing until you can’t swing anymore.”
And if he keeps playing, he has a good chance of getting his 10th career hole-in-one someday.
“I wouldn’t turn it down,” he said with a smile.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
