Kid Proved Long Ago That He Was an Ace

Jake Paine was only 3 when he got a hole in one on a 65-yard hole at the Lake Forest Golf and Practice Course in 2001, thus becoming the youngest golfer on record to do so.

Jake turned 8 on Feb. 15 and, according to his father, Bill, he has become an avid golfer.

Jake still plays at the Lake Forest nine-hole course, a par 29, and has shot a 34. However, he hasn’t had another ace, even though they run in the family.

Bill Paine, who teaches at Bergeson Elementary School in Laguna Niguel, said he got one in 1981 when he was 19, and his father, George, got one about 10 years earlier.

Trivia time: What is the record for most holes in one by one golfer?

Who’s counting: The longest recorded hole in one occurred on Oct. 7, 1965, when Robert Mitera aced the 447-yard hole at Miracle Hills Golf Club in Omaha.

“Here’s how I would play that hole,” wrote Cam Hutchinson of the Saskatoon (Canada) StarPhoenix. “Driver, 3-wood, 9-iron, sand wedge, 7-iron, putt, putt, putt.

“Put me down for a five.”

Name game: Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury News asks, “When will Nike come out with a set of drivers called Tiger woods?”

Or maybe Tiger could get together with actor Jeremy Irons and endorse a whole set of clubs.

Not his real name: Irons’ real name is Stephen F. Randall III. He changed it in 1973, with the stage name coming from one of his father’s golfing buddies who refused to use his woods.

A different kind of hazard: The second round of a recent amateur golf tournament in Australia was suspended because a robbery suspect fleeing authorities drove a stolen vehicle onto the course.

The Associated Press reported that the man, being pursued by 25 police cars, stopped on a fairway, got out of the car with a shotgun and barricaded himself in a nearby house.

Tournament officials said four groups were stuck on the sixth hole and couldn’t play it because it had been established as a crime scene. As Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times noted, this was a case of a “golf tournament with a shotgun finish.”

There is a difference: Randy Hill of Foxsports.com, on the difference between college ball and the NBA: “It’s hard to match college basketball’s excitement when the NCAA tournament reaches the round of 16. In the NBA, the most-publicized round was the one found in a gun the Portland Trail Blazers’ Sebastian Telfair was carrying [before a recent flight in Boston].”

Looking back: On this day in 1987, Michael Jordan scored 58 points to lead the Chicago Bulls over the New Jersey Nets, 128-113.

Trivia answer: According to the U.S. Golf Register, amateur golfer Norman Manly had 59. He got his first in 1964 and had four in 1979.

And finally: Geracie of the Mercury News, on why John McEnroe got a show on XM Satellite Radio: “Because he cannot be Sirius.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.