THE GHOST OF MIRACLE HILL : The story behind golf's longest hole-in-one and the mysterious man who made it

Golf Digest, March, 2001 by Ron Whitten

On Oct. 7, 1965, Bob Mitera teed up a ball on a downhill par 4, holed his tee shot and made national headlines. It has been all downhill from there. Or so it seems.

His was no ordinary hole-in-one. It was the longest ever achieved on a straightaway golf hole. It happened on the 444-yard 10th hole at Miracle Hill Golf Course in Omaha. It was the first ace for Mitera, the only one he has ever made.

I was an Omaha boy at the time, a high school sophomore who played much of my golf at Miracle Hill, a wind-swept cornfield of a course on the edge of the Papio Creek. I didn't know Mitera back then; I just knew of his accomplishments.

I was a beginner, a hacker. Mitera was a star. From 1956 to 1958, he won three consecutive Omaha junior golf championships. As a 17-year-old student at Creighton Prep High School, he won the city's public links tournament. When he made that hole-in-one, he was a 21-year-old junior at Creighton University in Omaha, a member of the golf team and a 2-handicapper. At 5-foot-6 and 165 pounds, he reminded local sportswriters of Ben Hogan. One even dubbed him "Bantam Bobby Mitera."

Today, his ace remains the longest in Golf Digest's record book. Having stood for more than 35 years, it's one of the oldest records in the game. A record that even Tiger Woods may never break.

"Tiger Woods can have the record," Mitera told me recently, before abruptly ending our telephone conversation. That was the first of several attempts I made to get Mitera to talk about his ace. I called him back several times, never getting more than a few minutes' conversation. Mostly he'd berate me for pestering him, then hang up. He'd be angry, but he never used a word of profanity.

So I went to his home, a nondescript beige duplex in northwest Omaha, less than two miles from Miracle Hill. Once, he shouted at me through a closed door to leave him alone. Another time, he opened it and spoke with me for a minute, then firmly shut the door in my face.

The man I traced and finally tracked down may be the most reluctant figure in the history of golf, the Bobby Fischer of the game's record book. It took me six years of on-again, off-again research to determine that Bob Mitera still lives in Omaha. Since he lives with his mother, his name doesn't appear in phone books or city directories.

Now 57, Mitera doesn't have a job, but apparently isn't lacking for income. He had joined his father's grain-commodities business after graduating from Creighton, then liquidated the company after his father's death. He still wears dark horn-rimmed glasses, just as he did in college, but now has a full beard, mostly white, and a noticeable paunch. But he looks as if he could be a 2-handicapper, if he still played golf. But Bob Mitera gave up the game a few years ago.

In one of my phone calls, I asked him why he quit playing.

"You don't think I know why you're asking these questions?" he said. "I'm no dummy. I'm a college graduate." He then hung up on me.

Why was I asking those questions?

Because for decades there have been rumors that Mitera's hole-in-one had been a fraud, a prank perpetrated either by Mitera or by the foursome ahead of him--or worse yet, a publicity stunt. Some guess that shame made him quit the game. Others speculate that the nagging rumors made him quit.

There's no question he has shunned the spotlight for nearly 20 years. Was he simply modest, tired of defending himself or frustrated over others cashing in on his achievement?

I'd always believed he'd made that ace. But skeptics had some powerful arguments. I just wanted to know, was his a legitimate ace?

The lay of the land

To understand the skepticism of some, you have to see the 10th hole at Miracle Hill. The fairway extends along a plateau for about 270 yards, then drops at least 50 feet downhill from there, to a slightly domed oval green positioned, in the words of one Miracle Hill regular, "like an egg sunny side up." The terrain of the 10th resembles the 15th at Augusta National, which, of course, is a 500-yard par 5. But to put it in perspective, imagine someone standing on the 15th tee at Augusta and driving a ball into the pond in front of that green. Or, more precisely, into a paper cup floating in that pond. That's how incredible Mitera's shot was.

You can't see the green from the tee. So Mitera didn't see his ball go into the hole that day. Or even see it reach the green. Nor did his friend Denny Houlihan, a fellow Creighton golf-team member who was playing with Mitera that day. Houlihan still lives in Omaha, but hasn't seen Mitera in 20 years.

Mitera wasn't particularly excited about the ace at the time, Houlihan told me. "Bob's reaction was somewhat indifferent. I mean, he was happy, but he was a pretty good player," Houlihan says. "It wasn't an unbelievable shot. After all, I hit it over the green that day."

I tracked down Jerry Dugan, who was the pro in the clubhouse when it happened. He remembers the boisterous Houlihan coming in after the round.