Mt. Ararat student sinks rare albatross at Topsham golf course

Dylan Napples turned a Sunday morning round at Highland Green Golf Club into a shot local golfers are unlikely to see again anytime soon. The 16-year-old incoming junior at Mt. Ararat High School aced the par-4 fourth hole in Topsham on June 29, producing what golf calls an albatross, or double eagle.

The ball disappeared on Highland Green’s fourth hole, nicknamed Governor’s Folly, a 207-yard par 4 that looks short on paper but still asks plenty of a player. The course layout describes the hole as protected by hazards, with a tight fairway, a demanding green complex and trouble nearby in the form of water and woods. Napples initially could not find his ball on or around the green, then discovered it in the cup.

A hole-in-one on a par 4 is rare enough that many golfers never see one in a lifetime. In tournament golf, it remains an outlier even at the highest level. The United States Golf Association says albatross became the preferred term for a double eagle by analogy with birdie and eagle, and PGA Tour coverage has underscored just how unusual the shot is by pointing to only a handful of recent examples, including a 2024 Valspar Championship albatross and Charley Hoffman’s par-4 albatross at the 2023 Wyndham Championship.

Napples’ shot carried extra local weight because of where it happened and who made it. Highland Green is a familiar Topsham course, and Mt. Ararat is one of the region’s most visible high school athletic programs. For an incoming junior who has been playing golf for less than a year, the shot stands out not just as a personal milestone but as a marker of how quickly local talent can surface in Sagadahoc County.

On a course designed to punish anything slightly off line, Napples found the most exacting result of all. Governor’s Folly lived up to its name, and then some, as a teenager from the area turned one of Highland Green’s hardest little holes into a moment his home course will remember.