{"id":6054,"date":"2019-06-27T10:02:35","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=6054"},"modified":"2023-08-04T09:29:01","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T13:29:01","slug":"the-walk-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/the-walk-on\/","title":{"rendered":"The Walk-On"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/div>

The Walk-On<\/h1>
Winning isn\u2019t always about being atop the leaderboard.<\/div>
By Mackenzie Matarese, as told to Tony Marchetti
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/header>\n\n\n\n

I golfed a little in high school with my grandfather, but I had never played competitively. Then one day last summer, Pat Jordan, who started the women\u2019s golf program at Monmouth, saw me hitting at the driving range. She suggested I try out for the team here and helped me contact Coach Michelle Melia. I came in for an interview, and five days later I was playing in my first tournament. My grandfather was so excited he bought me a new set of clubs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shot a 109 and a 111 that first outing, and didn\u2019t break 100 during the fall. But I kept at it. We practiced twice a day in season, and over winter break I worked with Coach twice a week indoors. She told me she wanted to give me the Freddy Couples swing\u2014the smoothest in golf. That\u2019s the goal, she\u2019d say. (We\u2019re still working on it.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shot a 90 in my first tournament this spring, and stayed in the 90s for a while. By then, my goal had become to break 90 before the season ended. Just before our last outing, the MAAC Championship, Coach kept telling me that she knew I was going to do it, that this was my time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I approached the last green on the last day of the tournament, I knew that if I parred the hole I would shoot an 86. I ended up double-putting and bogeying, but it was OK. I finished with an 87. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coach Melia met me on the green, put her arm around me, and told me how proud she was. I was so happy I couldn\u2019t stop smiling. (My teammate, Katie Baron, told me I\u2019d be smiling forever.) I had set a goal for myself, and with Coach\u2019s help and a lot of hard work, I had accomplished it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pictured Above: Golf Coach Michelle Melia (left) and Mackenzie Matarese embrace after Matarese shot a career low on her last round of the season<\/em>. Photo courtesy of the athletics department. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winning isn\u2019t always about being atop the leaderboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-play"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Athletics, Play","issue":"Summer 2019","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6054"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17991,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6054\/revisions\/17991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}