Mancil Davis Podcast- Part One

I interviewed Mancil Davis, The King of Aces for Hole-in-OneNews.com. This was shortly before Mancil recorded his 51st hole-in-one. Mancil talks about how he got started and most importantly, how he goes about getting hole-in-ones. Enjoy!

http://eaccountable.com/hio/mancil_davis_041307-001.mp3

For the transcription of the interview, please read below: 

Durk Price: Here I am. This is Durk Price, the editor of Hole-in-One News and, of course, what would be a better way to do our first podcast on Hole-in-One News than to have the all-time, record holder in number of hole-in-ones, Mancil Davis. And so, Mancil we are extremely excited to have you here at Hole-in-One News

Mancil Davis: Well, first of all, I’m excited to be here. It’s not the greatest of days here at the Woodlands where I live. I am not hitting golf balls which I desperately need to do. [Laughter] But let me actually clarify one thing. I actually have the PGA or Professional World record version. I don’t know all of the details.

Golf Digest recognizes my record but there is an amateur by the name of Norman Manly out in Long Beach, California. I don’t know if Mr. Manly is still alive. I know he would be well up in years if he is. I hope he is. I hope he is out playing. He actually has 57 or 58 and I don’t know all of the details very bluntly but at one point Gold Digest decided to just avoid any confusion, they elected the list minus the professional or PGA world record. So, I want to give Mr. Manly his due. 

Durk Price: I was afraid you were going to talk about that guy from Japan who played in Pebble Beach. 

Mancil Davis: Oh my gosh!

Durk Price: Who said he had an 18 handicap and actually it was like a 4 handicap that won the amateur deal going away. So this is a legitimate record as far as everyone is concerned.

Mancil Davis: That’s my opinion and it was kind of an awkward situation back in the, gosh, early 80′s or the golf digest was doing an article, as you are well aware. Art Wall had the hole-one-record for literally years and years. When I started playing golf at the age of 6, he had 39 or 40 aces which everybody assumed was a record that would never be broken. 

As I started making more and more aces, thankfully, I got a little closer to him and Golf Digest was doing an article on me and, hopefully, and that someday there might be an opportunity to break the record. In the midst of this article, Normal Manly came to be known and so there was discussion as to how many he had. And they elected to just avoid any controversy, whatsoever, and just listed mine as the professional and his as the amateur record.

I’ve never met him. We tried to do co-interview at one time several years ago and he wouldn’t do it. Again, I do not know all the details but everybody I’ve spoken to in years past that have played with him said he was just deadly with the iron. So anyway, Mr. Manly has the amateur record. I’ve got the Pro record, King of Aces title and I am tickled to death to have it.

[Laughter]

Durk Price: We’ve got you featured on our blog Hole-in-One News and so we’ll just start talking. Give us a quick background. How many hole-in-ones? The other incredible thing is how many double eagles you have. That is an incredible number!

Mancil Davis: Well, you know, you’re a golfer so you appreciate that. Oddly enough, that is much more unique or rare than the holes-in-one. I have 50 legitimate, official, witnessed, attested holes-in-one, which is the PGA record and then I have 10 double eagles, which is according to Golf Digest, and Guinness etc., is in fact the overall world record. 

Those are truly so much rarer than an ace and particularly mine. I never was a long ball hitter. So, nine of the double eagles were twos on par 5s and one of my holes-in-one was a one on a par 4. So, I got the double diff, I got to throw that in the hole-in-one category and the double eagle side.

[Laughter]

Durk Price: Well, you don’t need to catch up with Mr. Manly, you just need. You just need more of those! [Laughs]

Mancil Davis: I’m telling you. He actually supposedly had back-to-back aces on par 4′s.

Durk Price: Wow! 

Mancil Davis: I bet I hadn’t hit two par 4′s in my life! One of them just happens to go in and it was a fluke. I couldn’t see the green and we thought we lost the golf ball. But, you know, Durk I have been so fortunate. I’ve been around the game of golf since age 6. Growing up out in West Texas and Odessa. I didn’t know what a tree was until I was 13.

Durk Price: I was going to see you probably didn’t get any of those tree-hole-in-ones.

Mancil Davis: Well I just got to tell the story. I’ve got to tell the true story. One of my early aces in West Texas, beautiful little par 3 in a golf course called Golden Acres Country Club and I hit a three iron and the wind is blowing and I’m trying to hit a low, low draw which is about how you had to hit everything out there.

Durk Price: Yeah.

Mancil Davis: But I just flat blocked it, hit it dead right comfortably, 30 yards wide of the green and it hits a little Mesquite tree, kicks dead left toward the green, hits a sprinkler and goes in the hole. The funny part, as you can imagine, hitting the tree in West Texas is rarer than the hole-in-one. [Laughter] So, you know, all of them obviously weren’t good shots but, thankfully, the bulk of them were.

Durk Price: As we all say in golf, “We’ll take it.”

Mancil Davis: Somebody asked me one time, he said, “You hit the tree, it hits the sprinkler, it goes in the hole.” They said, “What did you do next?” And I went, “I teed off first on the next hole.” [Laughter] I put that one down proudly. 

Durk Price: Well for those that that will be old enough, that was kind of a Rube Goldberg hole-in-one, wasn’t it?

Mancil Davis: [Laughs] Without question!

Durk Price: Well, I actually long time ago, had a hole-in-one and I have been close a couple of other times. I have been 30 years since and I know that there are people who hit it good, that get more holes in one than I do. I maybe don’t hit it as good. Is there a way you attack a par 3 or to really optimize your chances of getting a hole in one?

Mancil Davis: Well, obviously for it to go in the hole 50 times there is a lot of pure unadulterated luck. There is no question about that.

Durk Price: It’s not lucky when you get 50.

Mancil Davis: Well, it’s kind of a unique situation. From day one I was always what would be considered a good iron player. I’ve always seemed to hit the irons well and pretty much on target. But it was odd. As I started making the aces, I would do interviews and I would try to describe it. Number one, I said, I feel differently standing on a par 3 with a six iron in my hand than I do standing in the fairway or with a six iron on a par 4 or par 5. I mean, first of all, I’ll probably never hit the fair ways on the par 4′s or par 5′s or I would still be on tour. So I could hit a driver. 

But I’ve always felt differently on par 3′s and I never could describe it in great detail. Now, very bluntly, I’m asked quite often, “How do you make an ace?” Well, number one, and I don’t mean this to be funny. Number one, I aim at the hole, and number two, I don’t use a tee.

There is a couple of strange things or by swinging you aim at the hole. I said, “Well, I visualize the shot very vividly before I hit it.” And I mean when I say I aim at the hole is if the pin is tugged behind a bunker on the left side I’m not trying to hit a straight line right to the hole. I’m envisioning a ball starting to the right, turning right to left, hitting and releasing and rolling in. But my ultimate target where the ball comes to rest before I swing is I’m aiming at the cup. I want the ball to go into the hole. 

I don’t use a tee. And, probably because I grew up in West Texas and the ground was too hard to get a tee low enough but, also, my thoughts are at, “Why four times around do I want to hit an iron shot off of a tee when I hit every other iron off of the grass?” So if there is good turf on the tee boxes, I much prefer to just get the ball sitting nice and clean and I feel like I can make the same swing that I do on the other holes but it was odd on the aiming at the whole portion. For years I kept saying that and talked about how well I envisioned or saw the shot before I hit it.

Sports Illustrated, probably, late 80′s or early 90′s maybe did a story on me and we did it in Austin. They literally put sensors on my head and had me hitting shots on par 3′s and we’d hit shots from the fairway and my brainwaves on par 3 tee shot swings were completely unique from the other shots.

Durk Price: Wow!

Mancil Davis: Number one, I had a brain. So, every body was happy about that. [Laughter] It was fascinating to me! My brain waves on the par 3 swings were very consistent with golfers over a very long putt. I don’t know if it was the visualization. I don’t have that same visualization or feeling as I said on the par 4′s and 5′s but I think part of it because I started making aces at a young age.          

I was very fortunate growing up in West Texas. The PGA section had literally, at that time, the strongest, most unique junior golf program in the country. They were so far ahead of everybody and every Monday and Tuesday for the summer months, we had structured, organized, competitive golf events. It was the West Texas Junior PGA Tour with adult score keepers.

Durk Price: Wow! Wouldn’t that be great? 

Mancil Davis: I mean it was just incredible with a tournament of champions. So, I started making all my early aces were in competition and was very well documented and witnessed. And I think maybe, and this probably sounds crazy, but I think because I made so many early that I almost felt like I could make the ace. And that’s where the visualization or maybe that’s why I get so focused on the hole. I mean, for example, if I asked you right now what you’re aiming at if I put your ball six feet from the cup, you’re going to say the cup. And from 12 feet and from 20 and 30 and 40.

Well then, all of a sudden, we’ve read in Golf Digest or Golf Magazine that all of a sudden we’re supposed to now say instead of trying to make it, what you do is envision this six foot circle or a big yard, the wash bucket they use to call it. Why do have to have to all of a sudden forget that the cup is the target? And at what point does our brain flip that switch? Well, maybe I just never learned. I mean, I don’t know. I wish it worked with the other clubs off the tee on par 4′s and par 5s in the second and third. [Laughs] 

I played the tour briefly in 1975 and 1976 and I’ll categorize that very quickly. My caddy made more money than I did. [ Laughter] Once I actually broke the record of Mr. Wall I was very fortunate People Magazine and Golf and Golf Digest, Sports Illustrated did some nice publicity and through that and the relationship with National Hole-in-One Association, they kind of came up with the King of Aces moniker and I started doing corporate and charity outings and the Million Dollar Hole-in-One shootouts full time.      

I had actually had been a director of Golf at the Woodlands here outside of Houston for many years and was very blessed to start making a living basically hitting seven irons and heavy duty PR.

Durk Price: Whatever it takes to make a living in golf. It always works.

Mancil Davis: There are much worse ways to spend a day. 

Durk Price: Yes, there are.

Mancil Davis: Without question.

Durk Price: Well, I think it’s really interesting about the brain waves and I think good players or even other players when you play around and you start hitting the ball well. It’s a zone. Good putters have it because they hit everything in sight. You know, you’ve played with guys that they make everything inside 10 feet. I mean everything.     

Mancil Davis: Well, particularly if it starts early in the round it carries over not only to the next hole, the next putt but it seems to affect the swings with the other clubs. That’s sort of the feeling, for lack of a better word, when I say how I feel on par 3′s. Oddly enough, when we did this Sports Illustrated thing I talked about aiming at the hole and every body kind of laughed at me. And I said, “We’ll make it as scientific as, I guess, as we can get in two days.”           

But we’d literally walked up at several golf courses in the Austin area and at random walked up to golfer as they were preparing to hit their tee shots on par 3′s and we asked, I would guess about 200-300 players. I don’t remember the exact number. It was a very simple question.

Before they hit we asked, “What are you aiming at?”

Listen to Mancil Davis, King of Aces, Interview for Hole-in-OneNews.com, Part One

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Hole-in-One, Mancil Davis, National Hole-In-One Association, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.