New Jersey is known as the Garden State, which is much better than it’s other nickname, the Fifth Circle of Hell. Basically, New Jersey is like the anti-New York, except with more humidity and pollution.

And sure, I’m willing to accept that many will take umbrage with painting New jersey as the place where Satan hangs out, and that’s completely understandable. In fact, I’m sure there are positively wonderful people who live there, and it really is a fine place and all.

But when I see two guys from N.J. score back-to-back hole in ones, it only enhances my belief that Satan lives down the street from Tony Soprano. They don’t call the hockey team there the “Devils” on accident, it seems.

“Two N.J. Golfers Get Back-To-Back Aces”

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The men were still calming themselves after witnessing a member of the foursome, Thomas Brady, score a hole-in-one, when Dennis Gerhart stepped to the tee. One stroke later, the celebration began anew. Gerhart had also holed out.

“I’ve never heard of that happening anywhere in the world,” Jim Woods, director of golf at Forsgate Country Club in Monroe Township, said Thursday, a day after the dual aces were recorded on the club’s Banks Course. “Two balls on the same hole in the same group is pretty impressive.”

“To have two happen like that, back to back, is just unbelievable,” Brady said Thursday.

Brady, 41, of Lopatcong, used a 6-iron on the 179-yard seventh hole, a downhill par-3. It hit the green and rolled about 30 feet into the hole.

Gerhart, 57, an electrical contractor from Point Pleasant, then made his ace with a 5-iron after hitting to about 20 feet. “It landed on the green and started trickling toward the pin. I thought it was going to stop short, but it kept rolling,” he said.

“His ball hit in almost the same spot on the left side of the green and rolled to the hole,” said Brady, a regional manager for Cooper Electric Supply, of Tinton Falls.

Gerhart described himself as a “weekend hacker” who plays 15 times a year. The ace contributed to a personal best score of 84. Brady, a skilled player with a 9.5 handicap, had a 79 on the par-71 layout, but even the pros find holes-in-one to be elusive.

So congratulations are in order to Brady and Gerhart on their amazing achievement. And, of course, sympathies are in order for their everlasting souls, which had to have been traded to the devil himself for it to have happened. It is New Jersey, after all.

–WKW