Nod your head in sheepish empathy if you’re too yippy with a wedge for it to be much use from tight lies just off the green. For a good portion of us, there’s never really much of an option beyond grabbing the putter and giving it a firm whack, knowing that it gives us the best chance to get the ball even reasonably close to the hole. Twenty, 30, 40 yards off the green—sometimes another zip code—we have no shame, even as our golf mates snicker.

Well, the Texas Wedgers Club has a new hero: David Micheluzzi. A little-known, 28-year-old Australian pro who is ranked 225th in the world, Micheluzzi was among 65 players who took part in a hole-in-one challenge in the week of the DP World Tour’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in early November.

On the downhill seventh hole at Yas Links, the tour set up a tee box that was 139 yards from the flagstick. The distance was critical, because it was longer than the previous Guinness World Record for the longest putt no in official competition. With cameras rolling, the DP World Tour filmed all of the attempts by players such as Tommy Fleetwood, Robert MacIntyre and Min Woo Lee. Part of the entertainment seeing all of them take what amounted to pitching wedge swings with the putter just to get the ball to roll that far.

With sprinkler heads, bunkers and a sloping green as challenges, it didn’t look like anybody could pull it off. Until Micheluzzi stepped up. He took a powerful swing and eyed the ball approaching the green. When it reached, it appeared that it might not fully make it over a mound. But the ball kept going, and with Micheluzzi shouting “Go!” it gently tracked and fell into the cup. Micheluzzi rightfully goes nuts, at one point jumping to click his heels together.

Such a fantastic scene. At the hole to retrieve his ball, the Aussie is greeted by an offical to confirm his world record, which the tour didn’t disclose officially until Friday.

As noted by the DP World Tour, Micheluzzi joins several players from the circuit who have set Guinness World Records. A couple of groups have notched the mark for the fastest foursome to play a hole—the last being Ian Poulter Tyrrell Hatton, Matt Fitzpatrick and Matthew Southgate doing it in 32.70 seconds in 2017. Thomas Detry set the individual record for the fastest hole by an individual when he played a par 5 in Spain in 1 minute, 29.62 seconds.

Main Image: Morgan Hancock