BIG-HITTING taxi driver Marcus Corfield could not believe his luck after recording his first hole-in-one.

In fact the 44-year-old from Farnworth was so surprised to have achieved the feat that he promptly set off on a series of cartwheels round the 17th green at Westhoughton Golf Club.

Moments earlier he had been searching high and low for his ball, until his playing partner suggested he looked in the hole . . .

and there it was, the Bridgestone ball he had driven from the tee 289-yards back.

“I’d never had a holein- one before – even on a par three – so to do it on a par four was something special,”

said delighted threehandicapper Corfield, who plays at nearby Hart Common Golf Club and was playing the Westhoughton course for the first time in a Little Hulton Conservative Club Golf Society event.

“It all came about because my mate, Stuart Brooks, hit a cracker off the tee and, because we were level on 32 points at the time, I decided to just go for it. I’m a bighitter – 300-yards-plus and I regularly reach par five greens in two – so I knew I could reach. I hit it sweetly and the ball soared over the trees. I knew it was a good drive but because I couldn’t see the hole, I had no idea where it had ended up. As we walked down the fairway someone said ‘That was some drive’, but when I got to the green I couldn’t find the ball anywhere. It was only then Stuart suggested I looked in the hole. When I saw it I just started doing cartwheels. I’d had a good day with four birdies on the first 16 holes – and even managed another birdie on the 18th. I was on fire.”