First ace a special treat for ex-football player

Just getting to play the ultra- exclusive Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville was going to be thrill enough for Henry Owen, or so he thought.

Little did the former Clemson football player know just how memorable the experience would be.

Owen, who lives in York, S.C., made his first hole-in-one that day. What's more, it came on a par-4, the 325-yard sixth hole of the Tom Fazio-designed course.

"Around here, everybody knows I hit the ball a pretty good distance, so it's not too unbelievable I could hit it on the green on a 325-yard hole," Owen said when asked if his friends believed he aced a par-4.

Owen did say he got a few headshakes at first, but all doubts disappeared when he told them he had seven witnesses - three playing partners and four caddies.

"That was definitely nice," Owen said. "The believability factor is pretty well intact."

One of the witnesses was Augusta's John Engler, a PGA Tour player who invited Owen to play with him at Sage Valley that day. Engler and Owen became friends when they were athletes at Clemson in the late 1990s.

It was Engler who discovered Owen's ball in the cup on the hole, which slopes from tee-to-green.

"As I walked up on the green, I didn't see my ball so I thought maybe it had gone over and I was walking that way," Owen said. "John had walked up the hole and said, 'Henry, it's in the hole.' The foursome went crazy. There was a lot of shouting and yelling. It was a good thrill."

Owen and Engler were playing the hole from the back tees.

"John just told me to hit it over the bunker in the fairway," Owen said. "It must have landed on the downslope after it went over the bunker and got a great kick."

Owen, a scratch golfer, shot 72 that day.

It was a more exciting day than most for the 27-year-old Owen, who is a funeral director at Bratton Funeral Home in York.

"A good family friend owns a funeral home, and I worked there during the summers when I was in school," said Owen, who went to mortuary school after graduating from Clemson, and took it up as a profession.

Reach David Westin at (706) 724-0851 or david.westin@augustachronicle.com.