The first thirty-two years of my story are not terribly unique. I grew up in a small town in southeastern Mass, bouncing back and forth between Mom and Dad’s houses. I played every sport I could, eventually focusing on baseball, basketball, and golf. I was a good student, followed the rules, and never really made any big mistakes. I was given everything I ever needed (or wanted for that matter) by my incredible parents and was fortunate to have the benefits of a middle class upbringing to make my life fairly easy.
When I was seven, my mom and stepfather started bringing me out to the local public course where they would hide my kids club in their bags and let me hit a few shots once we were of sight of the clubhouse (sorry Poquoy Brook…if my journey is successful, I’ll pay you back). By the time we got to the ninth green, I’d have the clubs hidden back in their bags and I’d be counting up the (slightly exaggerated) scores I had given myself on the scorecard I kept for myself.
It wasn’t long before I got the hang of things and my parents saw golf as not only something they loved to do, but an activity that could keep me busy and teach me a thing or two about life (I’m guessing the former, not the latter, was the true motivation). They joined a private club with a family membership and I was given access to everything I could possibly want golf-wise for the next decade-plus.
There were certain summers, both in high school and later in college where I more or less lived at the golf course. Practicing, playing, swimming in the pool, eating turkey clubs and chicken fingers…drinking ungodly amounts of diet coke (thanks for the free refills, Alan!). It was an awesome setup for a teenager, and one I probably took for granted at the time, but look back at now as a really special time in my life.
At some point during these long summer days, I fell in love not just with the game of golf (the act of playing 18 holes and adding up your score), but the grind of sitting on the range or putting green trying to decipher why the ball was reacting a certain way off the club face. If you had asked me back then (and honestly, my answer hasn’t changed 15 years later) if I’d rather go out and play or just go practice, I’d say practice 10 out of 10 times.
After a pretty good high school career, I went off to Holy Cross to play for the legendary coach, Bob Molt (Coach probably deserves another post all to himself…that guy was a legend in numerous ways). Balancing golf with an incredibly rigorous curriculum was not easy for me during the first couple of years of college. I was good enough to start a handful of tournaments my freshman year, and then after coming back from breaking my wrist during the fall season my sophomore year, I played pretty much every tournament the rest of my career. I co-captained the team my Junior and Senior years and made a couple of All New England teams thanks to some good finishes at NEIGAs.
I won ONE tournament in my college career … a one day shootout at Stow Acres Country Club during my junior year. I think I shot 73 or 74 on a very cold, windy day and won on the first hole of a playoff (birdie on the par 5 first…maybe 10th?? after hitting my trusty Cobra Baffler Hybrid to the back of the green from 230 and two putting). The competition wasn’t particularly great, but a win is a win and it gave me a lot of confidence. Around the same time, I qualified for a couple of Mass Am propers and won the club championship at my home course.
I eventually graduated with a degree in History … and while I would have loved to have turned pro, I was realistic enough (at that point) to know I just wasn’t good enough technically or mentally strong enough to be successful. I backdoored my way into a front-office finance job thanks to connections made on the golf course and a demonstrated willingness to learn from my more senior colleagues … ultimately leading to promotions and bigger paychecks. I set aside thoughts of doing what I loved in exchange for doing what was going to set me up financially for the future.
It’s been nearly 11 years now since I graduated college. In that time, I’ve lived in Boston, New York City, Seattle, New York City (again), Boston (again), and now Cape Cod. I met, worked alongside, fell in love with, got engaged, and married my now wife and best friend. We got a dog while living in Seattle (Teddy) and another more recently while living on the Cape (Lili). And the biggest life moment of all was the birth of our son, Jack, mid-pandemic in June of 2020 (holy cr@p, he is almost TWO!).
Professionally, I spent four years in finance before going off to grad school and transitioning into tech, where I became a consultant for a couple of years, then moved into leadership roles within the analytics and insights space at CHANEL, Microsoft, and now Collectors Holdings. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to make a really good living the last half decade helping people make sense of their data. Combined with my wife’s hard work, the decisions we’ve made up to this point have allowed us to live a very comfortable life, buy a house, a car, not think too hard about how we spend our money, etc. We consider ourselves incredibly lucky to lead the lives we do.
As for golf in that 11 years, it was pretty up and down. I was able to play a little bit right after school, entering into a handful of tournaments in 2011, 2012, and 2013. I was living in Boston so getting to the course become much more difficult, but I managed to find a bit of time on weekends.
It was the first go around in NYC where my ability to play really suffered. I played a charity tournament the first day I moved to NYC in July of 2014, but barely touched a club again until some point in grad school while living in Seattle (summer of 2016). I played my first competitive tournament in three years in summer of 2017 (shot 82 at Chambers Bay and actually felt like I played great) and played a few more that summer before heading back to NYC.
The one positive (golf related at least) about my time in Seattle was working closely with the University of Washington men’s golf team as their analytics guy for two years, first under Coach Thurmond and then Coach Murray. I also lived close to the UW driving range and found plenty of time to hit balls my second year of school. Working with the golf team there, looking closely at the (relatively) primitive data we were collecting, gave me a sense for what it takes to be competitive at the highest level (UW is a professional golf factory, with guys like C.T. Pan, Carl Yuan, and Corey Pereira all graduating from there while I was involved with the team).
Eventually I graduated and my wife and I packed up a Uhaul and drove back across the country to start new jobs and our new lives in NYC. This time around though, I was adamant that I’d figure out a way to play golf.
The following year, in 2018, after having recovered from a torn achilles (highly suggest you avoid this), we started looking for country clubs to join in Westchester, an hour and fifteen minute commute via subway, then train, and finally an Uber, from our apartment in the East Village of Manhattan. We fell in love with a little place across the street from Winged Foot called Bonnie Briar Country Club, and I made it my golfing home for the next eighteen months.
Despite only managing to play on weekends because of the commute, I played a lot of golf in late 2018 and all of 2019. I made a couple of really good friends at the course and we pushed each other to make the trek up there every weekend to get out and play. Not only was I playing with buddies, but I made a concerted effort to play as many of the local Met Golf Association events as possible in 2019. I just missed qualifying for the US Am that year after shooting 145 over two rounds at a course in Connecticut. I also finished third at the Westchester Mid Am that year. My best result was the Bonnie Briar Club Championship where I was the medalist in qualifying (by 7 shots) and then won the 36 hole match play final 14 & 13 (sorry, Andy!). That whole summer I played really well, shooting 66 multiple times at Bonnie and keeping my stroke average right around par for the year.
There were multiple times that summer where I thought about doing what I’m choosing to do now, but the obstacles of living in NYC and trying to play golf professionally seemed far too overwhelming at the time. I actually started variations of this blog a handful of times over the course of that year, never courageous enough to pursue it with vigor.
In October of 2019, we found out that my wife was pregnant and knew things would be a little different in 2020. We took a leave of absence from Bonnie (there was no way I could justify the 2.5 hour round trip commute on weekends while my wife was at home alone with a tiny baby) and golf was put on the back burner again. I played a grand total of five rounds of golf in 2020 … but that gap was filled with the presence of our new baby boy.
All of a sudden, every decision revolved around him. That summer, in the midst of a pandemic in the hardest hit city in the US, we decided to get out of dodge and move closer to my family back up in Massachusetts. We said farewell to NYC in September of 2020 and after a brief 3-month stint living in the South End of Boston, we closed on our new house in Sandwich, down on the Cape.
Shortly thereafter, we joined The Ridge Club (3 minutes from our house), and golf was truly and properly accessible for me for the first time since graduating from undergrad. I could hit balls while Jack napped, play a couple of holes on a weekday if my work schedule allowed for it, and play 18 on the weekends in 4 hours (including commute and warm up) or less. It also brought me back to the familiar territory of the Mass Golf Association, who do an awesome job of putting on a number of great events over the course of the season.
With the opportunity to play more at hand, I decided to recommit to becoming the best possible player I could be early in 2021 (not yet thinking I would end up pursing professional golf eventually). I started taking virtual lessons with Dom Azzopardi, a brilliant teacher based out of Australia who happens to coach Lucas Herbert, one of the brightest up and comers on the PGA Tour. It was the first time I’ve worked with anyone since leaving college, and it was a great reminder that golf is truly a team sport. Dom’s attitude and approach to helping me get better has been the biggest motivator for me continuing to grind through the “downs” and appreciate the work that goes into achieving the “ups”. We have worked on full swing, putting, and a bit of chipping … but most importantly, we’ve talked about the mental side of the game, how to practice, and what it’s like to be a PGA Tour professional and the standards that must be met to compete out there. Dom’s presence in my life, even from across the globe, is really hard to quantify, but I know I’m fortunate for having lucked into working with him.
2021 was a year of transition for my golf game. I went from playing golf with a practically hooded club face and a huge in to out swing path to a far more neutral set up, backswing, and impact position. Everything Dom and I do is an attempt at bringing things back to a pattern that will be repeatable and hold up under pressure. We have also worked really hard over the past year to create a more penetrating ball flight that will allow me to maintain consistency in windy conditions and control distance better in all conditions.
The big turning point in 2021 came in September when I flew out to Utah to play in the Provo Open alongside mini-tour professionals and elite amateurs. I put together two solid rounds (72 - 76) and made the cut easily, before having to withdraw to fly to Seattle and attend a memorial service. The scores were okay, nothing to write home about, but my play itself and the way I handled myself under pressure got me excited (more than I already was) about the changes we were making.
That brings us to this most recent winter where I outfitted the garage with an awesome net, mat, launch monitor, and putting green … an at home practice oasis that allowed me to maintain some sanity in the midst of the cold New England winter. It’s allowed me to practice daily and really focus on the mechanics of my golf swing, without worrying so much about on-course results. It’s also been a great place to get Jack picking up a club and introducing him to hitting balls (he plays cross handed at the moment … might need to get Dom involved early here with him).
With the 2022 season upon us now, I’ve been reflecting on the last 25 years of my life as it relates to playing golf, and I’m realizing how many lessons were embedded in the day-to-day grind of trying to be successful in competition. I’m not sure any of those reflections are mind-blowing or incredibly astute to the general public, but they are meaningful to me and my journey.
I’ve wrapped a lot of self worth up in the ability to hit a little white ball into a small round hole in the ground for a really long time. It seems silly on the surface, but when you frame the game within the lessons learned whilst playing and practicing, you realize why it makes grown men and women cry when they come out on top.
My hope is that I’m able to take those lessons learned across the last quarter century and make 2022 the year that I take a significant step forward in my quest to come out on top. I’m getting to a point in my life now where I’m mature enough to realize there is no better feeling than achieving something in which you’ve set your mind to … regardless of how big or small that achievement is to the outside world. In golf terms, it might be breaking 100 for the first time or winning the Masters. The magnitude doesn’t matter because the will and mental fortitude to achieve those goals are the same. The journey and steps one takes to get there is what creates the fulfillment upon completion.
For me, 2022 is the year I take the leap and commit 100% to doing the small things that will add up to big things on the golf course. 2022 is the year I truly (and I mean truly) do.not.give.a.sh!t when people tell me that becoming a professional golfer is a really dumb idea. 2022 is the year I embrace the ups and downs of the game and recognize in the moment that those are what makes it so special to me.
Thanks again for following along on my journey, the support means everything to me. If you didn’t catch my first post on the background for what I’m doing, you can check it out here … and please don’t forget to sign up for future updates!