Top 10: Top 10 Plays, Number Ten

This morning I was watching SportsCenter (yes, people do still watch this show) and caught the regular and popular feature, the Top 10 Plays of the Day. It's not an original idea, every sports columnist, show and blogger has their lists of greatness and power rankings. But not the Saloon. This got me thinking, the Top 10 Plays are always the same "types" of plays. Sure, once in a great while you may have a new record in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest that gets on, or possibly a Nascar highlight, but for the most part you really aren't seeing anything that hasn't been done before. And so I bring to the Saloon a Top 10 list of my own.

10. Hole-in-one (golf).

Get in the hole! Why won't you go to your home?

The hole-in-one always makes it into the Top 10. And why not? This seemingly impossible task is about as rare as spotting a black man at a Church of Scientology convention. (Yes, I know Will Smith is a Scientologist, I did say "black man".) According to the United States Golf Register, the estimated odds of acing a hole with any given swing are one in 33,000. This combined with the fact that most of us do not have the Daly-esque power to get an ace on anything but a par 3, and most courses only have about 3-6 per 18 holes, unless you are a golf pro and play every day the chance of you or I ever achieving it is even rarer.

The one thing that does appeal to us as fans about the hole-in-one is while none of us will ever win the Super Bowl or the World Series and then go out with hot supermodels that we will then impregnate only after learning that they have given us a gift in return in the form of syphilis, but that's not the least of our problems because we just shot ourselves in the leg while tending to our Cock Fighting Ring...wait, I'm rambling. What I meant to say is that while it is highly improbable, you or I could actually hit an ace in our lifetime.

The stakes are even raised during amateur golf tournaments, many of which will offer cash or cars for someone who does hit a hole-in-one on a particular hole. So how can we improve our chances of achieving this feat and possibly ending up on SportCenter? Well, according to holeinone.com there are many averages to those who achieve the elusive ace.

Average age of a Hole In One golfer: 44.6663 yrs., or about the average age that you are fed up with your wife and start golfing every weekend, even though you HATE GOLF!

Day of week most Holes In One occur: Friday.

Day of week least Holes In One occur: Sunday, because God HATES GOLF TOO!

Club most used in making an ace: 7 Iron, because just like Paris Hilton, everyone can hit a 7 iron.

But does it really take talent to hit a hole-in-one? Let me tell you a little story about a man name Jed, poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed. No seriously. One day a buddy and I were paired up with a couple of douchebags that were about as horrible at golf as they were annoying. One guy must have just picked up golf, because he was particularly bad. As we approached the 17th hole he must have been already shooting around 100. Dude hits a line drive shot on the par 3 over the water and onto the green past the hole, which was lucky enough for this guy. Only the back of the green is a hill, so the ball rolls up the hill, back down the hill and into the hole. Mother-fucker! So it just goes to show you that it isn't all skill.

To date, 22,717 have registered their hole-in-one's at holeinone.com. The greatest person to ever get an ace, of course, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who according to official government news agencies, routinely hits between three and four hole-in-ones per round. So while your hole-in-one to win a million dollars might make it your 15 minutes of fame, the fact that basically anyone can do it and it's more of a novelty puts the hole-in-one at Numero Diez on our Countdown.

Ginger's greatest #10: Michael J. Crean of Denver, CO- 517 yard par 5 9th hole at the Green Valley Ranch Golf Club on July 4, 2002.