By John Strege
It was a steep hill to climb for Mark Costanza on Friday, so steep that had he scaled it he might have considered himself on the top of the world. Instead, it was Stewart Hagestad who was occupying rarified air in the end, becoming the sixth multiple winner of the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship in its 40-year history.

Hagestad, who won the Mid-Amateur in 2016, defeated Costanza, 2 and 1, closing him out with a 35th-hole birdie at Sankaty Head Golf Club in Nantucket, Mass. It derailed an impressive comeback bid by Costanza, who was 7 down through 11 holes and 5 down after the first 18 holes of the 36-hole final played over two days because of weather issues earlier in the week.

“It’s amazing,” Hagestad said about joining the list of multiple winners. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t somewhat read up on the history and guys that have won two, and it’s an honour to have my name on that trophy twice.”

The victory earns Hagestad an exemption into the U.S. Open at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., next summer, as well as a likely invitation to the 2022 Masters. In the 2017 Masters, Hagestad, 30, a Newport Beach, Calif., resident, became the first Mid-Amateur to make the cut at Augusta National and was low amateur.

A USC graduate who is in his second year of an MBA program there, Hagestad did not win a hole on Friday until the clincher on the 17th green.

It is all over! @s_hagestad is once again the #USMidAm champion!

The first and only hole he won the entire morning is the one that closed out the match and earned him the ?

Final Scores: https://t.co/7qHjyXE3Zr pic.twitter.com/KmIKRGjk3n

— USGA (@USGA) October 1, 2021

“He gave me nothing the whole day,” he said. “I thought that at some point I would maybe get a break or he would give me a hole, which I wouldn’t say would stop the bleeding but would at least create some kind of a buffer. When I hit a great putt at the first hole, I had like an eight-footer and it went high, I think that the feeling of that match maybe pivots a little, or it changes just a little.”

Costanza, 32, a Morristown, N.J., investment banker on the first stage of his honeymoon (he and wife Meredith were married on Sept. 18 and were headed to Italy later on Friday), methodically chipped away at the deficit, finally reducing it to a single hole with a birdie on the 31st hole, No. 13 at Sankaty Head. But his comeback stalled there, and when he missed a 10-foot birdie attempt at 17, Hagestad followed by holing a four-footer for birdie to win.

“I said if I could get it to 3 [down] at the end of the day yesterday, that would have been great,” Costanza said. “But to get it to 5 was satisfactory and gave me a chance. I knew I needed to get off to a good start. The birdie I made on three [on Friday] was huge. That was a tough shot, and I hit a great 4-iron in there, and I think that kind of just set the tone and relaxed me almost for the day. Just started playing well from there.”

But Hagestad, a veteran of 24 United States Golf Association championships and playing in his fifth Mid-Amateur, was not rattled by Costanza’s charge.

“I knew that he would come out swinging,” Hagestad said. “He’s a really good player. He gave me a couple holes yesterday. I knew I wouldn’t get that from him today. But I tried to go out and I tried to basically make him beat me, and he damn near did that. He’s a tremendous competitor. He’s a great player. He’s a super guy. I had a feeling that I was going to get his best today, and he sure earned my respect for sure.”

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By John Strege
Life throws you curveballs, the old saw goes, though it does not also note that sometimes they’re hanging curveballs. Maybe it should. Kevin O’Connell got one and took it deep.

O’Connell, a reinstated amateur determined to give professional golf a second try, planned on entering European Tour qualifying later this year. Then he won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Charlotte (N.C.) Country Club last month.

The payoff for winning the Mid-Am is nothing that money can buy: A Masters invitation and a U.S. Open exemption, though with one important caveat: He has to remain an amateur.

“Well,” he said to his long-time instructor Todd Anderson, who had called to congratulate him on his Mid-Am victory, “it doesn’t make sense to go to Europe any more.”

“Yeah,” Anderson replied, laughing. “I think that’s off the table.”

Augusta National and the Masters and a U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links is an elite golfer’s winning lottery ticket. “How many opportunities are you going to get to play in the Masters and the U.S. Open?” asked Anderson, the Director of Instruction at the PGA Tour’s Performance Center at TPC Sawgrass.

The answer is sometimes more complicated. Colt Knost, for instance, won both the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Public Links in 2007, earning him a Masters invitation and an Open exemption, provided he remains an amateur. Instead, he chose to turn professional immediately that fall.

“Foregoing my invitations to [the major championships] was a very hard decision,” Knost said then. “But I feel like now is the time to begin my professional career. I hope to play in many of their championships in the years to come.” More than a decade later, Knost still has not played in the Masters and has played in the Open only once.

O’Connell, 30, a Cary, N.C., resident, was similarly not conflicted, though in the other direction. The Masters and U.S. Open, as well as a U.S. Amateur exemption and possibly playing on the U.S. Walker Cup team, prevailed without an internal argument. “I think those were definitely the primary reasons,” he said. “Secondarily, just the idea of another year of elite golf at the amateur level, it’s a good proving ground as well.”

So, a decision on a second professional foray has been tabled, the latest change in direction in his transient existence. A University of North Carolina graduate in 2011, O’Connell played three summers of mini-tour golf, on the eGolf Professional Tour.

“I just never really had the type of success I wanted coming off college,” he said. “I would always kind of get my money back, finishing 20th place or so, but I came to the realization, whether it was from a maturity standpoint or a physical skill set, I didn’t think I was where I needed to be. I played four years at North Carolina and prior to that, I played all the biggest junior tournaments and had played with Cameron Tringale, Russell Henley, Rickie Fowlers, Jamie Lovemark, those kinds of guys. I knew I wasn’t at that level yet.”

He tried PGA Tour qualifying on three occasions, without making it past the first stage. So he took a job with a boutique investment firm, where he worked for three years. Then a friend, T.D. Luten, a former assistant golf coach at Duke who had taken a job as a territory manager for PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf), called and offered him a job as a sales rep.

“He heard it in my voice, that sitting behind a desk nine, 10 hours a day, was not exactly what I wanted to be doing,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell’s on-again, off-again dreams of success in pro golf are on hold for a little while longer. (Copyright USGA/Chris Keane)

In the meantime, he had regained his amateur status. The new job that took him to golf courses and golf shops and allowed him more opportunity to work on his golf game. A year into it, the urge to try once more to take it to another level returned. “I really just kind of approached my parents with the idea that I wanted to give Q school a try again at the end of the year,” he said.

“If I could point out one thing that is the biggest difference between now and when I was playing the mini-tours, is that I would probably just point to general maturity. When you come out of college and into your first foray in professional golf you feel have to be this perfect player. That’s not really the case. You don’t have to be perfect. You just kind of have to get the ball in the hole.”

Anderson saw something else, a young player falling into a common trap. “He was chasing distance a little bit more, rather than playing the consistent control game he’d had success with,” Anderson said. “He went through a phase where he got a little bit obsessed with hitting the ball far. You don’t really realize you’re getting away from who you are as a player.

“He’s always been a very accurate player. He’s never really been the longest hitter, but he hits it plenty far. Now he’s going back to the kind of player he was when he was having success.”

Whether that will be good enough is not the only question ahead of him. Is time an issue, too? “The clock is definitely ticking,” Anderson said.

O’Connell and his wife, Michelle, a university recruiter for Cisco, have been married three-plus years, “and kids are something we’d like to have,” he said. “That’s probably my biggest concern. As far as age, the early 30s are somewhat a golfer’s prime. I don’t feel my physical skills have deteriorated.”

But those are questions for another day. The holiday season is approaching and in about two months, O’Connell will be checking his mailbox daily, in anticipation of receiving the greatest gift in golf, postmarked Augusta, Ga.

The post Mid-Am to put return to pro golf on hold … to play in two majors? The crazy story of Kevin O’Connell appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Augusta National is urbane, refined, haughty. Brockton is hardy, its chin sturdy, a town capable of taking a punch, but also of throwing one. Augusta is Bobby Jones, gentleman lawyer. Brockton is Rocky Marciano, its favourite son, 43 KOs on a perfect 49-bout boxing ledger.

So what does Augusta National have to do with Brockton? Nothing, if the club had its druthers, the cynic might say. Cynicism aside, it is a tribute to both Augusta National and the USGA that a Masters invitation landed in a Brockton mailbox on Christmas Eve.

“USPS=Santa Clause [sic],” Matt Parziale tweeted, along with a photo of the Masters invitation. “The best Christmas present ever.”

USPS = Santa Clause. The Best Christmas Present. #TheMasters #christmas #christmaseve #teddy pic.twitter.com/kromXhOCpt

— Matt Parziale (@Matt_Parziale) December 24, 2017

Parziale, 31, is a bona fide blue-collar worker, a firefighter with Ladder Company 1 of the Brockton Fire Department, the seventh busiest ladder in the country. His Masters invitation was extended by virtue of his having won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship on the Capital City Club’s Crabapple Course in Atlanta last October.

“It is an amazing story,” his instructor, Shawn Hester, said. “It’s great to see that in this day and age a regular working person can have an opportunity through what the USGA has created with the Mid-Amateur to play in the Masters and U.S. Open [Parziale qualified for that, as well]. It really gives you a sense that these tournaments, they’re still accessible to a regular person. That’s a great thing about our game.”

This assumes degrees of regular, we submit. As an unidentified wise man once said, “all men are created equal, then a few become firemen.”

“Great firefighter,” Brockton Deputy Fire Chief Charles Davis said of Parziale. “First in and last out, as we call it here in the fire department. He’s a young, hard-working, aggressive firefighter.”

This does not make him unique among firefighters, a heroic band by definition. But he will stand out at Augusta National, maybe the most compelling U.S. Mid-Amateur champion ever to compete in the Masters. For one who is trained to run toward and often into burning buildings, the tee shot at Augusta’s par-3 12th hole and its swirling winds won’t be the most daunting task he’ll face all year.

Competitive golf and firefighting don’t neatly align and can be a greater challenge than club selection at the 12th. Last summer, Parziale shot a 66 at The Country Club in Brookline in the second round of the 50th Francis Ouimet Memorial Tournament. He then reported for an overnight shift with the fire department, got home around 8 a.m. and was ready for his 11:10 a.m. tee time. He shot 71 and won by one.

“Matt’s a better person than he is a golfer, and he is the best mid-am golfer in the country.” — Greg Chalas

“I wouldn’t say that I’m used to it, but you can’t really think about it because you are competing and in the moment,” Parziale told the Massachusetts Golf Association. “It’s part of my life, so if I complain about that I have bigger issues.”

Nearly three months later, Parziale won the U.S. Mid-Amateur in Atlanta, flew home, arriving at 2 a.m., and reported to work the following morning at 7 with no hope that the fire alarm would acquiesce to his weariness and go un-rung for a couple of hours.

“I wish that was the case,” Parziale said. “We’re never that lucky.”

Brockton’s Ladder 1 had 4,880 runs in 2016, according to Firehouse Magazine’s annual survey (its 2017 survey is not yet complete), an average of nearly 13½ runs a day. Parziale was aware of the challenges, at any rate; his father, Vic, spent 32 years with the Brockton FD before his retirement last year.

Firefighter was not Parziale’s first career choice, incidentally, and there was no second choice. Professional golf was it. Having a Plan B suggested a negative connotation. “It doesn’t seem like you’re all in,” he said. “I was all in.”

Blame it on Tiger, who set the hook, as he had done for so many kids, and the game reeled him in after that. Parziale was 10 when his father and grandfather took him and a shag bag of balls to the Brockton Fairgrounds and allowed him to flail away. Parziale did so relentlessly and became good enough to play college golf, though at the NAIA level. He competed from 2006-2009 at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., a school that might be accused of a subliminal nudge toward the firehouse. Southeastern’s nickname is Fire.

The years between college and career, 2009 through 2012, were spent on mini-tours and in Monday qualifiers. “I had a blast,” he said. “It was great. I love to compete at the highest level possible. It just wasn’t fitting the lifestyle I was hoping for. You have no money.”

So he returned to Brockton and reclaimed his amateur standing, while deciding to follow his father’s lead. He joined the fire department in 2014. “I watched him my whole life love his career,” Parziale told the USGA. “I knew a bunch of the guys even before I got on. I always enjoyed being around them. The fact that I was able to be one of those guys is a dream come true.”

Boston Globe
Parziale has learned to juggle golf with working for Ladder 1, sneaking in tournaments between 24-hour shifts.

The job allows him to contribute to society and his hometown while still providing ample time to keep his golf game honed and to compete at the elite amateur level. Typically, he works a 24-hour shift, has two days off, followed by another 24-hour shift and four days off.

“Sitting in a cubicle five days a week, Matt made it a point to not do that,” Greg Chalas, Parziale’s best friend and best man for his impending wedding, said. “He wanted to do something great for the community. But part of it was that he has set his life up to be able to play tournaments.”

Last summer alone, Parziale won the Massachusetts Amateur, the Ouimet Tournament (for the third time) and the Massachusetts Four-Ball. He also is a past champion of the New England Amateur.

As for the wedding, it was scheduled for Aug. 18, 2018, the day the semifinal matches of the U.S. Amateur Championship at Pebble Beach will be played. Parziale’s Mid-Amateur victory also gives him an exemption into the U.S. Amateur.

“Try telling a woman to change her wedding date,” Parziale told the Boston Globe a few days after his Mid-Amateur win.

Fortunately, he has an understanding fiancé, Alison Hubbard, a dentist in Brockton, who agreed to move the date up a couple of weeks. “We found a date that is going to work for everyone,” Parziale said. “It’s going to be an exciting August.”

The wedding will be the capstone to a year that already resembles a golfer’s winning lottery ticket: The Masters at Augusta National, the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and the Amateur at Pebble Beach.

“I’m looking forward to being able to compete,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to play golf at the highest level possible, and now I have a chance to do it a few times, which is awesome.”

It will be a family affair, too. His father caddied for him at the Mid-Amateur and will caddie for him at Augusta, Shinnecock and Pebble Beach. “He went down for a practice round [at Augusta National late last year],” Vic said, “and I told him, ‘If you want to get a club caddie who knows greens and stuff …’ and he said no.”

Matt also will have the firehouse providing moral support, belatedly. “There are probably 210 firefighters in Brockton,” Vic said, “and maybe 15 that play golf, and only 10 that are serious about it. They didn’t really see what was happening to start.”

Copyright USGA/Chris Keane
Parziale’s U.S. Mid-Am win earned him spots in the Masters, U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach.

They do now, and given Parziale’s popularity among them, they’ll be a formidable rooting section. “Phenomenal young man,” Davis said. “Salt of the earth guy. He’s worked hard to get where he is. The biggest thing is all the guys support what he’s doing.”

Chalas, who lives in Indiana now and works for Easton Vance, an investment management firm, has played golf with Parziale since they were teens, and went with him to Augusta for a practice round in November and another this month. He has first-hand knowledge of Parziale’s skill on a golf course. Yet he rates it secondary to his character.

“Matt’s a better person than he is a golfer, and he is the best mid-am golfer in the country,” Chalas said. “The story for me is that he’s a blue-collar, rock-solid guy. Ask anybody about his personality and it’s never that he’s a great golfer. It’s that he’s a great dude. His personality attracts him to people. He just happens to be a great golfer, too.”

Good enough to own a USGA championship trophy. But amateur golf is a niche within a niche sport, so he won’t likely turn a twosome, Marciano and another Brockton boxing champion, Marvin Hagler, into a threesome that gave Brockton its identity, the City of Champions. But he ought to.

He isn’t a world champion, but he is a national champion with a Masters invitation and a tough blue-collar job more dangerous than trading blows with Joe Louis or Thomas Hearns. More important, too.

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