LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- So now the kid with the 100-mph fastball has an ace on his resume.
Braves closer Craig Kimbrel fired a hole-in-one during Tim Hudson’s charity golf tournament Monday at the difficult ChampionsGate Golf Club outside Orlando.
“Went in on the fly -- I dunked it,” Kimbrel said Tuesday. “Second hole we played, 180 yards into the wind. I got lucky. Good thing it went in because I probably would have four-putted from about two feet away.”
It was the first hole-in-one for Kimbrel, who plays plenty of golf in Atlanta and back home in Huntsville, Ala.
“It would have been a little more spectacular and exciting if I’d known it went in from the tee box," he said. “There was a bunker right in front of the hole and the pin was in the front of the green. I hit it and said, man, it looks good. And Jonny (Venters) said, ‘Man, that does look good.’ And the ball just disappeared.
“My first instinct was that it went in the bunker. The last thing I thought would have happened was it went in the hole. It was exciting. A lot of fun.”
Someone grabbed the flag from the hold and gave it to Kimbrel, and ChampionsGate is making a plaque that will hold the ball he used for the shot.
All that, and Kimbrel didn’t even have to pick up the bar tab like golfers traditionally do when they make a hole-in-one.
“Open bar, because it was at an event,” he said, smiling. “I bought everybody’s drinks, because it was free. The guys I was with were ragging on me because it was an open bar.”
Asked if acing a hole before he’d pitched in a game might be a little foreshadowing for 2013, Kimbrel said, “I hope so. It’s a good sign. Hopefully I don’t run out of luck before the season gets here.”
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