What Is an Albatross in Golf? Meaning and Odds
Updated July 2026
An albatross is a score of three strokes under par on a single hole — golf's rarest widely recognized feat, usually made by holing out a full second shot on a par-5 or, even more absurdly, acing a par-4. Americans generally call the same thing a double eagle. Either way, it's not something most golfers, including very good ones, will ever do. This isn't an eagle with a fancier hat on; it's a genuinely different tier of rare.
Key Takeaways
- An albatross = three strokes under par on one hole, usually a hole-out second shot on a par-5.
- Also called a double eagle — "double eagle" is the American term, "albatross" the British/international one, and both mean exactly the same score.
- Odds are commonly cited around 1 million to 1 for a given attempt, far longer than a hole-in-one at roughly 13,000 to 1.
- On the PGA Tour, only about 142 albatrosses have been recorded since the stat started being tracked in 1983 — averaging just a few per year.
- Golf sees roughly 40,000 holes-in-one worldwide in a typical year, against only a few hundred albatrosses in that same span.
How Do You Actually Make an Albatross?
There are really only two realistic paths. The far more common one: a par-5 in two shots, meaning a big drive followed by a long approach — often a hybrid, fairway wood, or long iron from 200-plus yards — that finds the hole. The rarer path is an ace on a par-4, which requires both serious length off the tee and a hole location that cooperates; these show up almost exclusively on short, driveable par-4s. There's a third theoretical route — three shots on a par-6 — but genuine par-6 holes are rare enough on their own that this barely registers as a category. For context on whether a given par-5 is even reachable in two for your swing speed, the club distances guide is a useful sanity check before you get your hopes up standing on the tee.
How Rare Is an Albatross, Really?
Genuinely, brutally rare. Former USGA statistician Dean Knuth has put the odds at roughly 1 million to 1 for an amateur golfer's shot to produce one, and other estimates run even longer, up into the millions-to-one range. Compare that to a hole-in-one, which sits around 13,000 to 1 for an average golfer — meaning an albatross is something like 75 to 100 times less likely than an ace most golfers already consider a once-in-a-lifetime event. The gap shows up at scale, too: golf worldwide produces something like 40,000 holes-in-one in a typical year, against only a few hundred albatrosses over that same stretch. On the PGA Tour specifically, where the best players in the world are playing courses set up to reward exactly this kind of shot, only about 142 albatrosses have been logged since the Tour started tracking the stat in 1983 — call it three or four a season across an entire tour full of elite ball-strikers. That scarcity is really the whole story here; an eagle is a great hole, an albatross is a story you tell for the rest of your golfing life.
Why is it so much rarer than an eagle?
Because it demands both distance and precision converging on a low-probability outcome at the same time. A two-putt eagle just needs a good drive and a green in two. An albatross needs that same drive, plus a full approach shot from well over 100 yards that goes directly in the hole — not close, not two-putt range, in. That's asking a shot that's normally judged a success by landing on the green to instead find a 4.25-inch cup. See the golf scoring terms guide for how albatross stacks up against every other score name on the ladder.
Double Eagle or Albatross: Why Two Names?
Both terms describe the identical score — three under par — and the split is almost entirely geographic. "Double eagle" is the American term, showing up in U.S. newspapers as early as the 1920s, built on the same eagle-beats-birdie logic that gives eagle its name: two eagles' worth of under-par, doubled. "Albatross" is the British and international term, first documented in golf writing around 1929, following a different logic entirely — birdie, eagle, then a bird rarer and larger than an eagle, which is exactly what the albatross is in ornithology. Today, "albatross" has become the more common term internationally and is increasingly the one used in golf media generally, while "double eagle" remains the dominant term inside the United States. Neither is more "correct" than the other; they're parallel naming conventions that both stuck.
What's the Most Famous Albatross in Golf History?
Gene Sarazen's 4-wood from 235 yards on the par-5 15th at Augusta National, during the final round of the 1935 Masters — still remembered as "the shot heard 'round the world." It erased a three-shot deficit in one swing and sent Sarazen into a playoff he went on to win, and it's widely credited with helping put the still-new Masters on the golfing map. In major championship history more broadly, albatrosses have been recorded fewer than twenty times total across all four majors combined, which tells you how much of an outlier even Sarazen's peers found it. The Masters alone has seen four recorded albatrosses in its history — Sarazen's among them — while The Open Championship, played across a much wider variety of reachable par-5s over the decades, has logged around six.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
- Yes, completely. They're two names for an identical score — three strokes under par on a hole. "Double eagle" is standard American usage; "albatross" is the British and international term. There's no scoring or rules distinction between them whatsoever.
- An albatross, by a wide margin. Hole-in-one odds for an average golfer sit around 13,000 to 1, while albatross odds are commonly cited around 1 million to 1 or longer. Worldwide, holes-in-one number in the tens of thousands each year; albatrosses number in the low hundreds.
- Not under normal circumstances, no — a par-3 albatross would require a score of zero, which isn't achievable in the game as played. Albatrosses come from par-5s (two shots) or, occasionally, par-4s (a hole-in-one).
- Historically only a handful — the Tour has recorded roughly 142 total since it began tracking the stat in 1983, which works out to somewhere around three or four in an average season across the entire schedule. Some years produce more, some produce none at all.
- Yes — a "condor," four strokes under par on a single hole. It's so rare that only a small handful have ever been documented in recorded golf history, none of them in PGA Tour competition. The eagle in golf guide covers where that sits on the full rarity ladder alongside eagle and albatross.
- No — it's simply the actual score you made on that hole, entered like any other result when you post for your handicap. The name is a label for the achievement, not a separate scoring category.