China’s Yan Liu joined a very exclusive golf club Friday in the second round of the LPGA Tour’s first major of the season, the Chevron Championship.
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In the midst of a round that had the 27-year-old vying to stay at the top of the leaderboard, Liu arrived at the par-5 eighth hole at The Club at Carlton Woods having made two bogeys over her first seven holes. With No. 8 playing at 505 yards, Liu powered a drive that left her 175 yards to the flag. She chose a 7-iron and flew it to in front of the green and the ball found the cup for a 2. (Unfortunately, no video of the spectacular shot was available.)
With the double eagle, or albatross, Liu shot to the top of the board, and she ended up there when she notched her only birdie on the last hole to shoot 72 to be in the lead at seven under in the weather-delayed event outside of Houston.
“It’s pretty crazy,” Liu said in a Golf Channel interview afterward. She noted that she also made an albatross on the last hole of an Epson Tour event—also with a 7-iron. Liu, ranked 195th in the world, is seeking her first LPGA win since reaching the tour in 2023.
How rare is a double eagle? In all of last season on the LPGA, there were only two. Gina Kim pulled off a 2 on a par 5 in the ShopRite LPGA Classic, and Nanna Koerstz Madsen did it at the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship.
By contrast, there were 29 holes-in-one recorded by LPGA players in 2024.
Those numbers alone show that an albatross is the most coveted result in golf—if you don’t count a condor, which is the extremely rare ace on a par 4. (Only Andrew Magee has a condor in the history of the PGA Tour.) Albatrosses are a beautiful thing because they are at least possible because many pros can at least reach a par-5 green in two. According to The Double Eagle Club, which tracks albatrosses, there were 30 total scored on the LPGA between 1971 and 2023. Only five of those were notched from 2014 and after.
Meantime, the PGA of America puts the odds of a tour player (gender not identified) making a hole-in-one at 3,000 to 1. As for double eagles, in 2015, the USGA’s Scott Hovde responded to a query from The Double Eagle Club. In calculating double eagles on the PGA Tour, Hovde looked at the fact there were about three per year among approximately 281,000 holes played each season, and he put the odds at 72,000 to 1. So, that translates into an albatross being 24 times harder to achieve than an ace.
Whatever the numbers are, it was the shot of a lifetime for Liu. Welcome to the club.
