Two Portales amateur golf partners beat the odds, each recently dropping a pair of aces from the tee only a month apart.

But you haven’t heard the best part yet when it comes to this hole-in-one story.

Each golfer has multiple aces to their credit.

For William Raisbeck, it was the second ace in six months. And Steve Tuttle, well, his hole-in-one on Feb. 27 was the third of his career.

Raisbeck dropped one in last September and claimed his second on March 22. 

For amatuers like Raisbeck and Tuttle, the odds of hitting a hole-in-one in a lifetime are 1 in 12,500 attempts, according to an article on Golfer Guide’s Web site.

 Raisbeck got his latest shot on the 165-yard fifth hole with a Callaway Hybrid three-wood.

“We were playing that afternoon and it was kinda windy that day,” Raisbeck said. “The wind was blowing directly at us. The ball was flying directly at the hole and it looked really good.”

They lost track of the ball as it sailed into the sun and dropped. When Raisbeck and the others made it to the green, he noticed two balls and figured one of them was his.

“Tuttle walked up and said, ‘There is a ball in the hole.’ We all thought he was joking,” Raisbeck said. “Tuttle read the number on the ball, it was a Callaway green number four with three red dots. I marked my balls with three red dots and sure enough he pulled it out of there.”

Raisbeck got back into playing golf in 2002 after a 27-year absence.

Tuttle and Raisbeck are golfing partners, and Tuttle was there to witness both of Raisbeck’s aces. Unfortunately, Raisbeck missed his friend’s lucky shot a month ago.

Tuttle got his third career hole-in-one playing the No. 14 hole on the blue tee.

 The wind was coming out of the west at 30 to 35 mph, Tuttle said.

“I had to use a driver to hit the ball due to the wind,” Tuttle said. “I knew it went toward the green. We all looked around and then all of a sudden one of the guys I was playing with chipped a shot onto the green. His friend said ‘Hey, there is another ball in here.’ ”

Tuttle has been playing golf since 1972. His first ace was at the University of New Mexico North Course in Albuquerque. The hole in one came on the No. 2 hole about 150 yards. He was playing by himself that day.

“I was out there between classes,” Tuttle said. “They’ve got all these sand bunkers around and I said to myself, ‘I know I hit it good. I looked for 10 minutes and said, ‘What the hell?’ I looked in the hole and there it was. There was a guy over on the No. 6 hole, who was applauding, telling me he saw it go in.”

Tuttle’s second was at Los Alamos Golf Course in the 1980s.

“I played football and basketball in high school,” Tuttle said. “Playing golf gives me something to do, being able to walk and hit the darn little ball.”