Davis Shore makes rare par-4 ace at PGA TOUR Canada's Windsor Championship

Davis Shore’s PGA TOUR Canada season has been going on for all of three weeks, and to say he’s come out firing is an understatement.

After capturing his first win last week at the Osprey Valley Open presented by Votorantim Cimentos CBM Aggregates, he followed up by making PGA TOUR history on Friday at the Windsor Championship with an ace at the 290-yard, par-4 15th hole using his driver. There have been four albatrosses in Korn Ferry Tour history and just one in PGA TOUR history, with the most recent one in 2012. Shore’s ace marks the first on PGA TOUR Canada.

"Yesterday I actually hit it up on the green with a 3-wood," Shore explained after his round. "It was into the wind today so it was a perfect driver. I hit it really well and it was right at the pin, but the thought of it going in never crossed my mind until it actually went in 'cause I was just trying to get it somewhere around the green so I could make a birdie.

"I think it hit the flagstick pretty hard, we could hear it hit the pin from the tee .... It was pretty incredible. I knew it was in because the people behind the green were going crazy, which was really cool to see it go in."

The hole-in-one came on Shore’s sixth hole of the day after starting his second round on No. 10. He opened with back-to-back pars before making double bogey on his third hole, birdie on his fourth and another double on his fifth hole. He finished his first nine with a bogey at 18 to make the turn at 1 over, then proceeded to reel off three straight birdies to start the back. He finished with a 67 on the day and at 3 under for the tournament, is likely to miss the cut by several shots.

"This week hadn't gone my way and after that I actually played well, just too little too late," said Shore, who noted he'd never had a hole-in-one in a tournament round nor on a par 4, but he has had an albatross on a par 5. "But I needed a miracle at that point to make the cut. I needed to do something crazy to make the cut, so I was just playing golf."

The 24-year-old Shore made his 2023 season debut at the Commissionaires Ottawa Open, where he finished T28 to start a hopeful run during the season-long race on the Fortinet Points List, where the final five finishers get Korn Ferry Tour cards.

Then Shore made his mark a week later, capturing his first career victory at the Osprey Valley Open. The victory was a much-needed confidence boost after overcoming several injuries while playing at the University of Alabama including a hip impairment, a torn labrum that required hip corrective surgery and a fractured L3 vertebrae that kept him from playing golf for nearly an entire season while in college.

After cementing his name in the winner’s circle, Shore’s name is now etched in PGA TOUR history in another realm.