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Facing a tough hole location with 140 yards of water to carry, Kirk Rawles gripped the women’s 8-iron in his hands and struck the golf ball high into a swirling breeze. The Titleist Pro VI golf ball seemed to float in the air forever before gravity began to pull it back to Earth. As the ball fell from the sky, it never found grass. It dunked directly into the cup for a rare hole-in-one.

Rawles, the golf coach at Durango High School, made the ace Tuesday at Dalton Ranch Golf Club. It was the third hole-in-one of his life, and it gave him a stunning trio with one made at each of Durango’s courses – Dalton Ranch, Hillcrest Golf Club and The Glacier Club.

“I’m so fortunate to have a hole-in-one on three different courses around here,” Rawles said. “I don’t know how many have done that. I feel very lucky that it happened. There’s so much luck involved in trying to do that.

“I was laying in bed all night like, ‘Did that just happen?’ You take the apex of an 8-iron with the ball 90 to 100 feet in the air. You imagine being on the 10th story of a building and dropping a golf ball into a red plastic cup – what are the odds of it ever happening? In those conditions, you gotta be kidding me. I can’t believe it went in the hole.”

Tuesday’s ace came on Dalton Ranch’s par-3 No. 14, which plays 156 yards from the black tees. The pin was placed in the front of the green and made the hole play about 146 yards, Rawles said. The wind is known to swirl on that hole with either a headwind or a crosswind. Rawles said both were present at around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday when he stepped to the tee.

Instead of hitting his usual pitching wedge or even a 9-iron, he grabbed the 8-iron.

“Where the pin was, it was four paces on from the water. I couldn’t hit a lower-flighted shot, and if it didn’t get up high enough, it was just tough,” Rawles said. “I was gonna hit it into the wind, hit it over the water right of the pin with a little draw on it. It drifted over toward the pin and it just went straight down. It didn’t even hit any grass, it just went right in the hole. It seemed like it was in the air forever, and we were all watching it not knowing if it would be short or long, but it went right down in the hole and sunk, didn’t bounce out, didn’t move.”

The shot was witnessed by current DHS golf team member Anthony Flint, who lost the hole despite making a 25-foot birdie putt of his own, as well as Caleb Newman, who played for two years for Rawles with the Demons before moving to finish high school in New Mexico. Newman works at Dalton Ranch.

“Is it there,” Flint asked as the trio watched the ball in the wind. “It should be,” Rawles replied.

It was dead on.

“It was amazing,” said Flint, who has a hole-in-one of his own made in 2018 at Hillcrest Golf Club’s par-3 No. 12. “That hole is pretty hard. When we saw it in the air, it kept getting higher and higher. I knew it might be good. When we saw it just disappear and not come back out of the hole, it was insane.”

Rawles would shoot an 11-over-par 83 for the round with the eagle on No. 14.

The equipmentRawles, who now has a handicap of about seven strokes, normally uses forged irons made for skilled players. But it was a set of women’s irons he had with him Tuesday. Rawles often will grab a women’s iron when coaching the DHS girls team to show the players proper grip and address of the golf ball. DHS assistant golf coach Kermitt Barrett joked with Rawles that he always hits a great shot with a women’s iron, which has a lighter shaft with an offset head that sits behind the shaft of the club. The set of Callaway Steelhead X-14 irons he used Tuesday are a full cavity back designed for players with a higher handicap.

“I’ve been experimenting with some things,” Rawles said. “Kermitt says I never miss with the girls clubs, so I figured I’d try them for a round. This was the second round I put them in my bag. They are lighter than light can be, and I just stripe them. They go straight as an arrow. On that particular swing, it worked out great. It’s pretty hysterical.”

Though Rawles was playing with a high-end ball, it didn’t come new out of a box. It was a used Pro VI with a logo he did not recognize that he had found out on a course during a previous round. He continued to play with the ball all day Tuesday and realized Wednesday he should probably take it out of his bag.

“Lucky I didn’t lose it,” he said.

The firstRawles’ first hole-in-one came Sept. 20, 2000. He was at The Glacier Club, formerly known as Tamarron.

Back then, the hole was named “Needle.” It was the sixth hole and played as a par-3 at 130 yards. Rawles, who at that time was a one- or two-handicap player, hit a gap wedge to the elevated green with the flag out of sight from the tee box.

“I couldn’t really see the green or see the ball land,” Rawles said. “A friend of mine, Craig Cahalane, drove by, and he was the assistant superintendent up there and helped me coach skiing at the time. He told me to hit it about right of the flag and that it should catch the slope and come back down to the flag. I couldn’t see it at all. I went up and saw my ball mark on the green and walked over and saw the ball sitting in the hole.

“That was pretty exciting, and Craig got me the flag that I have mounted with the scorecard and a picture of the friends I was playing with.”

The secondThe second ace for Rawles came on Hillcrest’s No. 12. That hole can play as long as 195 yards from the black tees and also has to carry over water. On June 21, 2014, Rawles said it was playing 186 yards to the flag.

Rawles wasn’t even sure he would play golf that day. He was on the practice putting green with former DHS player Devon Pierce and saw two more of his former players, Trevor Bogus and Bo Ward, making the turn. Pierce and Rawles decided to hop on and play with them on the back-nine.

“I birded No. 10, birdied No. 11 and knocked it in the jar for a hole-in-one on No. 12. Those guys were just rolling their eyes at me,” Rawles said. “That one was cool because I got to see it go in. The pin was front left, and the wind was blowing pretty good. I hit an 8-iron there and was yelling for it to get up. It got up, landed and I yelled, ‘Go in.’ It rolled six feet and right in the hole. We were all so excited, and the cart girl working the course was Myranda Crawford, who I coached on the Durango girls team. She drove by right after I knocked it in. It was so great to all celebrate together.

“It’s always been really cool to have these moments with players I have coached. Those are kids you’ve road tripped with and been with a lot going to different tournaments. To see them real excited is always a great experience. It’s why you play the game, shots like that.”

jlivingston@durangoherald.com