Good luck had never really joined Suffolk’s David Blair on the links. He had to count on other things.

But in a lighthearted effort to change his luck about three years ago, he began drawing shamrocks on his golf balls, a nod to his Irish roots.

It took a while, he said with a laugh, but the strategy finally paid off on the misty morning of Aug. 1 at Suffolk Golf Course, where he achieved his first-ever hole in one on No. 14.

He said he was “tickled to death” in reaction to the feat. “The closest I’ve ever been is three foot, four inches.”

Playing with Wesley King and James Blair on Friday, David Blair began the par-3 No. 14 hole from the senior tee, which was 100 yards out. He used a 9-iron and focused on his usual goal.

“All I ever try to do is hit the middle of the green,” he said.

He hit the ball, but a sand trap protecting the front of the green made it difficult to see exactly what happened to it.

“We saw it bounce one time, but we couldn’t see what happened to it,” David Blair said.

After the other two teed off, the group debated on its way to the green about where Blair’s ball went.

He said King told him, “’David, it’s in the hole. I guarantee you, it’s in the hole,’ and there it was.”

It was still raining at the time, and Blair said, “That probably helped it.”

Blair, 65, first played golf sporadically in the early 70s. He started playing consistently around the time he retired four years ago from The Blair Bros., Inc., a Suffolk-based paving business where he worked for about 40 years.

Explaining why he was able to get his first ace after five to six years of regular play, he said, “Luck, because I had a horrible, horrible front nine.”

But the hole-in-one made all of that seem insignificant.

“It made my day,” he said.