Family Ties

Last summer, the final match of the Country Club of Pittsfield's club championship pitted six-time winner Matt Scarafoni against his father, Gary, himself a four-time winner.

In many ways, this seemingly yearly match-up has become as routine as the PGA Tour's annual run up to Augusta every spring.

“I don’t even know how many times they've won it between them,” said CC of Pittsfield head professional Brad Benson.

One down entering the par 4, 18th hole, Gary stiffed his approach shot to five feet.  With the pressure squarely on his shoulders, Matt calmly sank his 18-foot birdie putt, dashing his 63-year-old father’s hopes of playing David to Matt’s Goliath in the process.

Anyone who has ever endured through the ebb and flow nature of match play can certainly relate with how Gary Scarafoni felt after being defeated on the final hole. Following an especially crushing loss, we have all given into the tendency to cuss, cry, or contemplate quitting the game indefinitely.

But not Gary Scarafoni. Not on that day.

“That was a great way to end the match,” Gary said months later. “As a father, I can’t lose.”

Such has been the case for Gary throughout the past three decades, as he has watched his two sons, Matt and Todd, blossom from precocious kids in Benson’s junior golf camps to accomplished businessmen, each with their own craft.

Todd, 37, always felt comfortable in and around the game of golf. Naturally, then, he became a P.G.A. professional not long after he was graduated from Franklin and Marshall University in Lancaster, PA. His “whirlwind tour,” as Matt describes it, includes stops in Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, and, most recently, the Country Club of Wilbraham.  This year, though, he will begin his first season as head professional at Mount Pleasant Country Club in Boylston, MA.

During his time as golf chairman at the Country Club of Pittsfield, Todd’s work ethic and keen instinct caught the eye of Benson, who has been a staple at the club for nearly 25 years.

”He had the drive and he definitely had the desire to succeed,” recalls Benson. “He was hands on. He did it all. He really had a lot of input.”

Matt, four years Todd’s junior, held an even more, shall we say, hands on position during his junior days at the Country Club. No, he didn’t dish out ice cream at the snack shop near the tennis courts. He was responsible for picking the driving range. As an incentive, Benson paid him by the number of baskets Matt could fill up.

”He stayed out there until (the balls) were all in,” joked Benson. Fast forward to today and the same workmanlike qualities he demonstrated then serves him well as the mastermind behind the Scarafoni Financial Group, which he started in 1993.

With two young boys, Jack and Luke, to raise at home, and a demanding business to boot, Matt’s golf game has rightfully taken a backseat on his list of priorities.

That’s not to say he no longer possesses the ability to light it up on the golf course. In last year’s Berkshire County Allied Championship, he blitzed Skyline Country Club to the tune of ten (yes, ten) birdies in 15 holes during the second round. Only an unfortunate quadruple bogey nine on the par 5, 16th hole kept him from victory.

Two month later, he parlayed his club championship victory over his father into his third city championship crown, firing a 4-under par 31 on the front side at Pontoosuc Country Club en route to a 68 and a six shot victory over Pontoosuc’s John Montgomery.

“Matt is a natural player,” said the eldest Scarafoni. “But he would rather be with his kids or at work. It’s about prioritizing.”

That same philosophy can be seen in Gary’s game, where age has forced him to rely less on distance and more on a venerable savvy. Gone are the days where he can keep up off the tee.

“Now my motivation is to be in shouting distance of their drives,” said Gary, self-deprecatingly.

Regardless of the lost yardage, he¹ll never lose his zest for competition. But, as his golfing career enters its twilight, Gary is equally content to casually tee it up with old friends or reminisce about the stories of yesteryear over a glass of wine.

Not surprisingly, many of these stories involve Matt and Todd, both of whom committed several comical breaches of golfing etiquette during their forays as junior golfers.

During one memorable round at the Country Club, a teen-aged Todd hit an unusually woeful drive on the par 4, 15th hole that missed the fairway by a hefty margin. Fed up, Todd snapped, Tommy Bolt-style, and dispensed his driver into the nearest oak tree. Problem was, the driver didn’t come down, perhaps afraid to return to its abusive owner.

“I was petrified about going home without my driver,” Todd remembers.

Then there were the rare occasions when the Scarafoni household failed to capture the Allied Father-Son, and internal team chaos ensued.

“I can remember blaming it on Dad,” joked Matt.

Then there are those singularly phenomenal golf shots that will forever be etched in Gary’s mental golfing archive. Like the brilliant 230-yard 2-iron Matt struck to six feet from the rough on the par 5, 16th hole at the Country Club. Or the 6-iron to six-feet that Todd carved out from underneath the trees at Berkshire Hills on the par 4, 8th hole during the
City Championship.

Since their journey first began, golf has provided the Scarafoni’s with an expansive range of experiences that are surpassed only by the richest of golfing lineages.

The boundaries of golfing etiquette have been tested and then respected. Memories have been created and then retold. Club Championships have been won and Father-Son Tournaments have been lost. But winning and losing has never mattered most.

Not to the Scarafoni’s.