Andy DevaneyIf Matt Vigurs has indeed made the longest ever hole-in-one in England, he discovered it in a wonderfully unceremonious fashion: by looking everywhere else first.
The 32-year-old, a +1 handicapper and Worcestershire first-team player, had driven the 411-yard par-4 third at Great Barr Golf Club during a scratch match. His ball vanished. Eventually, with the sensible places exhausted, he checked the cup. There it was.
The 411-yard drive that simply disappeared
The hole offered Vigurs a clear visual cue in the shape of an oak tree, and he chose the sort of shot that sounds modest until one remembers where it finished.
“I played a little cut off the oak tree,” he explained. “We all hit good drives and we found three of them down there. Then we were looking for mine.”
The first assumption was not that he had just holed a drive from 411 yards. Golfers are optimistic creatures, but there are limits.
Vigurs searched left of the fairway, roughly 50 yards short of the green, where he expected the ball to be. Nothing. He looked behind the green. Again, nothing. Only then did the least plausible option become worth investigating.
“At that point I looked a bit silly, so I thought I might as well check the hole – and there it was, nestled in the bottom. I had to take two or three looks. I couldn’t believe it. They didn’t believe me till I pulled it out of the hole and we just went mad!”
A one on a par four is an albatross as well as a hole-in-one, which is already enough arithmetic to make most scorecards look faintly embarrassed. Doing it on a hole listed at 411 yards shifts the story into another category altogether.
A comeback season with very little rust
The Great Barr ace did not arrive in isolation. Vigurs only returned to regular golf in February after spending eight years living abroad, yet his 2026 season has developed with indecent haste.
He had already made three holes-in-one before this year’s run, including two as a junior at Gaudet Luce. Then came another at the Droitwich Club Championships: a 6-iron from 191 yards at the par-3 15th. He went on to win the 36-hole stroke play event in a play-off.
In June, he added the Worcestershire County Championship at Blackwell. That is a fairly efficient way to reacquaint oneself with the game.
“It’s been a good year really,” he said, “especially considering I didn’t really pick up a club for eight years when I was living abroad. When I moved back in February, my wife has been working away so I play most days when I can!”
Practice, apparently, remains annoyingly useful.
Is it really the longest hole-in-one in England?
This is where the story needs a cooler head than the one Vigurs understandably carried to the next tee.
The supplied account describes the feat as a possible English record, but it does not provide independent certification or a recognised national record entry establishing that no longer ace has been made in England. Until that evidence exists, the longest ever hole-in-one in England is best treated as a credible question rather than a settled title.
For any record claim of this sort, the details matter: the official length of the hole from the tee used, the competition circumstances, witness accounts and confirmation from the host club. There is also a distinction between a hole being listed at 411 yards and a shot being independently measured at precisely that distance.
None of that makes Vigurs’ feat less extraordinary. It simply keeps the journalism on the fairway.
England Golf Championships Director James Crampton captured the scale of it rather better than a spreadsheet could.
“We hear of holes-in-one all the time, but a 411-yard one – it’s the stuff of golfers’ dreams!
“It sounds like Matt is in the purple patch of his golfing life – and you have to enjoy these moments. At odds of 6 million to one for an albatross, the fact his was from such a distance has to be even greater!”
The six-million-to-one figure is presented in the source as an estimate for an albatross. The specific odds of holing a tee shot from 411 yards are not established there, which is probably just as well. Some numbers are more decorative than helpful.
He still had a match to finish
A hole-in-one creates one practical problem: the round continues.
“It was so weird – I couldn’t concentrate for the next hole!”
Vigurs recovered sufficiently to win his match, while Droitwich Golf Club secured promotion by winning the league on the same day. The celebrations then travelled back from Great Barr to Droitwich, where another familiar golfing tradition took over.
“It was an expensive one!”
There are few cheaper ways to write a one on the card and fewer more expensive ways to explain it in the clubhouse.
The ball is safe; the ambitions are not
Vigurs, who works as a product and training manager at McLaren, has kept the ball. He would also like something slightly harder to lose.
“I’m trying to get in touch with Great Barr so they can give me a flag – I want to get it framed. They were talking about putting a plaque on the hole as well, which would be nice!”
A plaque would be fitting, particularly if the record claim can eventually be substantiated. For now, the shot already has the essentials of a durable golf story: a player in formidable form, a drive nobody could find, several increasingly desperate places to look and one final destination that seemed ridiculous until it wasn’t.
Vigurs is not finished with 2026, either.
“I’d like to try and win the County Match Play and do well in the English Champion of Champions event at The National Golf Centre at Woodhall Spa in September.”
Those are conventional golfing ambitions. His latest entry on the résumé is anything but.
At 411 yards, even the disbelief had some travelling to do.
