One aspect of playing a major golf championship without fans misses their role in communicating the results of shots when they are out of sight of the golfers. At the 2020 PGA Championship, we saw it play with the delayed reaction to a hole-in-one from Byeong Hun An – the first of his professional career – at no. 11 during the final round of Sunday.
One took a great line and shot on the pin, throwing the ball a few feet short and putting a direct roll in the bag. With no fans behind the green bursting out after witnessing the rare ace, however, An was left with a kiss of uncertainty about the outcome of the shot. But as you can see in the clip below, there was a spectator – or a marshal as staff, we assume – who let out a festive holler to let An know that he had the tea shot of 189-yard had been buried.
The microphones grabbed it “is it in?” and the ensuing celebration, with the group at tea laughing that, seeing the reaction from the green, it must have been something special.
Check out the shot and celebration below.
The hole-in-one was a continuation of what until that point had been a stellar round for An, following four birdies on the top nine and helping him move up the rankings. The 28-year-old South Korean brought that momentum to the definitive stretch of holes for the championship, and looked to top his previous PGA Championship high finish of T28 (2017) with one of the best rounds of the day.
