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Massimino Story

SE: Competitive Fire Helps Massimino Win Dev Series Final

Oct 21, 2021 | Men's Golf, Sports Extra

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Imagine being Roland Massimino, freshly graduated from Kansas State in the spring of 2019, and shortly after getting your PGA TOUR Latinoamerica card in January 2020 — whammo! — the pandemic hits, and your young professional golf career is on hold for six months.
 
Palm Beach County golf courses are closed, so you drive 30 minutes north into Martin County and join Hobe Sound Golf Club just to squeeze in 18 with a handful of fellow professional golfers. Suddenly you're playing for pizza in these one- or two-day mini golf tours near your home in Jupiter, Florida, simply because you never know when or where you'll be able to play for something big again. Because COVID.
 
"You're going a little bit crazy," Massimino says, "just trying to do something."
 
Over the next year and four months, you'll play in eight tournaments.
 
"As a professional golfer you had to make the decision: are you going to sit around and do nothing," Massimino says, "or are you going to get better?"
 
Now imagine being 24-year-old Massimino last Sunday. You never won a golf tournament at K-State. Sure, you won four one-day events in Florida, but you must think back to the last time you won anything big. But you know one thing for certain: You've never won anything quite this big. You're in your white Titleist cap, navy blue polo, smiling for the camera while holding a trophy of an iron tiger head under the bluest darned sky in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico. You just won your first career victory as a professional.
 
 
Then you realize it's your first big win since winning the Philly Junior Tour Tournament when you were 16 and living with your folks back home in Lumberville, Pennsylvania.  
 
"Do nothing or get better? I chose the latter," Massimino says. "I definitely became a lot better since being at K-State and over the last year, especially. It was a lot of hard work, and sticking to it, and not getting down on myself too much. This game… this game will make you crazy sometimes. You're going to have a lot of disappointment.
 
"You have to stick with it and believe that you're good enough to go out and win. I had that belief for a while, but just didn't see the results. To get the big win, this validation was really nice."
 
Even crazier than holding an iron tiger head trophy at the season-ending Dev Series Final at El Tigre Club de Golf is how it came to be.
 
The Dev Series Final featured a field of 84 players and Dev Series Executive Director Jose Manuel Garrido called the 72-hole tournament "a unique opportunity for many rising stars to start their international careers." Massimino was proud of his final round, 6-under 66 to finish at 16-under, shooting 13-under for the final two days. He was finished. He was on pace to finish second and had accomplished his goal of re-earning his PGA Tour Latinoamerica card.
 

He had finished 20 minutes ahead of the final group and had already signed his card. He found a seat on a little deck off the restaurant that overlooked the 18th green and called his parents back home in Lumberville. They were ecstatic to learn of his second-place finish. He watched the final group approach and saw 54-hole leader Jaime Lopez Rivarola miss a 12-foot putt. But Massimino also knew that Rivarola had held a five-shot lead entering the back nine, and that he had been at 18-under with two holes to go. What Roland didn't know until the leaderboard popped was that he had witnessed the final stroke of Rivarola's unravelling.
 
"All of the sudden, my name and his name popped up on the leaderboard as 'T1,'" Massimino says. "We were tied."
 
Overtime.
 
Golf will make you crazy sometimes, and Massimino knew as much as he grabbed his caddy, ran onto the range, and began firing off 15 balls just to get warm again after having spent the previous 20 minutes unwinding on a deck. Massimino and Rivarola were taken back to the 18th tee for a playoff. They faced the daunting 612-yard, par-5 with water to the left. They both parred the 18th. So, they played it again. This time, Rivarola's drive went left into the water, and he finished with a double bogey-7.
 
Massimino made a 5 to secure the wild victory.
 

"It's right up there, definitely, among the craziest things I've been involved in," Massimino says. "It was a wild ride."
 
Massimino attributes part of his success to Dr. Ian Connole, who served as K-State's director of sports psychology and certified mental performance consultant during his freshman and sophomore seasons (2015-17). Massimino used Dr. Connole's guidance to secure an individual bid to the 2019 NCAA Athens Regional. He thought back to Dr. Connole's teachings many times over the years. Especially last Sunday at the Dev Series Final. Pressure situations. How to maintain composure. How to play through physical symptoms of stress. How to listen to the body. How to conquer the mind.
 
"I cruised to the finish and had no mistakes," Massimino says. "Under those circumstances, just to keep my composure was big. It validated what I'd been working on."
 
Interestingly, golf wasn't Massimino's first love. Oh sure, he and his brother dug holes in the backyard of their parent's house, which sat on 11 acres in picturesque Lumberville, to design their own little golf course. But they just messed around. Massimino wasn't huge into swinging the sticks until later. The Massimino's – all the Massimino's in the family – were fiercely competitive. They were a loving family. Everybody also wanted to win. And this carried over onto the basketball court. This tends to happen when the legendary Rollie Massimino is your grandfather.
 
Rollie, of course, knew all about performing under pressure. He won 816 college basketball games and led Villanova to the 1985 NCAA Tournament Championship win over mighty Georgetown in one of the greatest upsets in NCAA history.
 
"It was pretty cool to learn from my grandfather," Roland says. "The coaching that he instilled into us translates to now. He always said, 'You've just got to compete. Don't play to lose — play to win!' That was his mentality, which is huge in golf, especially down the stretch in a tournament, when people can get hesitant and play too safe.
 
"His words echo in my head sometimes — 'Play to win!'"
 
But crazy things happen growing up.
 
"Probably when I got to be a freshman in high school," Massimino says, "I realized I wasn't that great at basketball. After my freshman year, I focused on golf."
 
Massimino attended New Hope-Solebury High School and loved playing at The Ridge at Back Brook in Ringoes, New Jersey, about 20 minutes east of home. He began playing in tournaments. Then he began to have success. Then he fell in love with the game. And he kept having more success. He finished third in the 2013 Pennsylvania State High School Championship and second in the state championship his senior year.
 
"I was lucky to get a scholarship offer from K-State," Roland says. "I certainly wasn't one of the top junior players coming out of high school, but I got a lot better at K-State. Then I got a lot better after that."
 
Roland Massimino


Time passes. The competitiveness doesn't stop. Three years after Rollie retired to West Palm Beach, Florida, following a basketball coaching career that spanned five decades, Rollie in 2006 established the basketball program at nearby Northwood University, which was sold later to become known as Keiser University. In two seasons, Rollie had the Northwood University Seahawks in the 2008 NAIA Elite Eight. Then they reached the national semifinals in 2011 and were national runner-up in 2012. Rollie died at age 82 on August 20, 2017. Roland was entering his junior season at K-State.
 
"He was a bulldog, and his teams were great," Massimino says. "They were just tough. They were all tough. They weren't going to back down to anybody. I did get to watch him coach at Northwood a little bit there. He was probably a little less animated in his older age, but he definitely still had that bulldog mentality."
 
Roland thinks of his grandfather often. He certainly thought about him last Sunday.
 
"He would've been super proud," Roland says. "He loved following me and supporting me in golf. He loved golf in general. He loved watching me. I'd go to the range down here and he'd watch me hit balls. It was great to have that support from him. Even at an early age, he didn't care that I stopped playing basketball and started playing golf. He loved it, which was great. He definitely would've been super proud of me in seeing my win. It would've been awesome to have shown him the trophy and to have celebrated with him."
 
Imagine what Rollie would've told his grandson.
 
"He probably would've told me, 'This is just the beginning. Now keep working.'"
 
That Massimino competitive fire, ever present, certainly was at hand, as Roland calmly captured his first professional victory. He certainly appears destined for many more. Do nothing or get better? Roland has chosen the latter. Through it all, through this crazy game called golf, Roland still hears the voice sometimes. Yes, the coach is still coaching, the grandfather guiding his grandson, Rollie's words still echoing in Roland's head under the bluest darned sky in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico.
 
"Play to win!"
 
What a journey.