Washington (CNN) – Hitting a hole-in-one is a rare achievement for any golfer. What’s even rarer is a hole-in-one during a round with the president of the United States.
“It was pretty special,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss said of his feat, which took place during a Monday game with President Barack Obama and two other senators.
“The ball actually flew the route I wanted it to. I didn’t scull it. Hit a little fade,” Chambliss explained. He was speaking after arriving back on Capitol Hill, where a vote on an internet tax bill had cut the round short. The Georgia Republican, dressed in a blazer and golf shirt but not the necktie required for men on the Senate floor, shouted out his vote from the adjacent cloak room.
The hole-in-one came on the 156-yard eleventh hole on the South course at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where Chambliss joined Obama and two fellow senators, Colorado Democrat Mark Udall and Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, for an afternoon on the links.
Corker, who was paired with Chambliss, said his partner initially wanted to exchange his five iron for a six, but didn’t want to hold up the party. Instead he choked down on the five.
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“It was a long way back to the golf cart and I didn’t want to go back, so I said I’ll just choke up on this one,” explained Chambliss, who also said it was the second hole-in-one of his 40 years playing the game.
After his shot, “we couldn’t tell whether or not it went in,” Chambliss said.
“We thought it did,” he said. “Sen. Udall said, ‘You either went in the hole or you went over green and I think you’re in the hole.’ The Secret Service said, ‘We think it’s in the hole.’ But we didn’t know until we got up there. I went up and looked in the hole when we got to the green and everybody went crazy.”
Afterwards, the president retrieved the ball from the hole and handed it to Chambliss, and signed the pin flag along with the other golfers.
“It’s going to be framed with the ball and, you know, if my children want it one of these days they’ll get it,” Chambliss said of the flag. “Otherwise it will probably be in the nursing home with me and my wife.”
The afternoon vote on Capitol Hill meant the foursome could only play fifteen holes, and Chambliss couldn’t buy the round of drinks that’s traditional after a hole-in-one.
But he was able to sneak in a jab at the president on the course.
“I told him that since I got the hole-in-one he ought to give us everything we want on entitlement reform,” he joked.
In reality, policy wasn’t a big part of the conversation Monday, Chambliss explained.
“This was a day to get away from the office and the president seemed to enjoy himself and I know the three of us did. It was just like playing with my usual Saturday morning foursome,” he said. “There was a lot of jawing back and forth on short putts and what you would usually expect in a normal golf foursome. It was a fun day.”