Brian Giesler

As the golf ball soared in the air toward the green and the pin, Brian Giesler began calculating the chances of it finding the cup.

Giesler, a sophomore on the Grove City College men’s golf and basketball teams and a Slippery Rock High graduate, had never had an ace before.

He picked a great place to get his first: The 207-yard No. 17 hole at Bethpage Black in Farmington, N.Y.

“Before I hit the shot, I was thinking lame stuff like don’t push it to the right,” Giesler said. “When I hit it, I thought, ‘That’s a pretty good shot.’”

His friend and Grove City College golf teammate, Seth Johnston, watched the flight of the ball and turned to Giesler and said, “That might go in.”

It did. But it took a few minutes for Giesler and the rest of his group — Johnston, Brian’s father, Randy Giesler, and GCC golfer Blake Brogan — to figure it out.

“There’s a bunker in front of the green, so you can’t see it,” Giesler said. “As we were walking on the fairway, we started talking about holes-in-one.”

When they reached the green, they saw the ball mark from Giesler’s shot about eight feet in front of the cup. When Giesler peered into the hole and saw his ball, he went numb.

“I was in shock,” Giesler said. “All three of them came up and hugged me. I think they were more excited than I was.”

There have only been five holes-in-one on the Bethpage Black course since 2010.

Golf Digest has ranked the Black course as the sixth toughest in the United States, one spot behind Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh.

Getting an ace there is almost as difficult as getting a tee time.

And it almost didn’t happen.

Randy Giesler called two days in advance to set up a tee time and they got one at 4:30 p.m. July 7.

People often sleep in their cars in the parking lot to wait for a chance to play the course, the site of the U.S. Open in 2009.

Brogan, who works at the course as a caddy this summer, warned that the time may be too late.

“He said groups who started that late didn’t finish their rounds (July 6),” Brian Giesler said. “They only got through 15 holes.”

Brogan told them that an earlier — and more expensive — slot had opened up and the group jumped on it.

“It was better to pay a little extra money and be able to finish our round,” Giesler said. “It’s a good thing we did or maybe that hole-in-one never would have happened.”

But it did, and now Giesler is going to be immortalized on a plaque inside the Bethpage Black clubhouse.

Giesler, who got his ace with a 4-iron, shot a 79 in his round.

“I easily could have had a 74 or a 75,” Giesler said. “It’s a very difficult course. I was just happy to be able to say I broke 80 there.”