Lovable golf pro shared gift and passion for the game
On a golf course, Matt Cole was a larger-than-life player for reasons that went beyond his physical stature.
One of the best competitive golf professionals this area has known, Cole died Feb. 6 at age 57 from various health issues.
“For a big guy, I don’t remember him being exceptionally long off the tee, but his touch and his shortiron play was phenomenal,” said Kevin Corriveau, the program coordinator for sport and recreation at St. Clair College and a former Canadian PGA pro.
“Matt was very kind to me when he was (the head pro) at Pointe West and I was down the street at Fox Glen,” Corriveau recalled. “He was an established player and a very accomplished player, but he helped me out a lot.”
Cole spent five years playing on Canada’s professional tour against future PGA regulars in the U.S. Cole won the Canadian Tour stop known as the Charity Classic, now known as the MacKenzie PGA Tour Canada, at Windsor’s Roseland Golf course in 1988. Along the way to victory, he fired a 62 that stood as the course record at Roseland until it was retired following course renovations in 2011. The Canadian Tour honoured Cole’s contributions with a lifetime exemption that he briefly considered exercising in 2012 when he flirted with the idea of a competitive comeback. “Matt had a passion, obviously, for the game,” said Mark Kappes, another CPGA pro and a friend since their childhood days playing junior golf in Stratford. “He held that passion his entire life. To reach the level he reached as a player and be able to teach the game like he did, you have to have an extreme amount of passion for the game.”
When Kappes opened Texas Road Driving Range in Amherstburg in 2007, he quickly brought on Cole as a teaching pro. “People would follow him to wherever he went,” Kappes said. Cole first came to the area in the ’80s as an assistant pro to Dale Thompson at Beach Grove Golf and Country Club. Thompson met Cole in the pro shop of the Stratford Country Club. Thompson arrived with a busload of women members from Beach Grove on a golf and theatre road trip. Stratford’s head pro volunteered Cole to help unload all the clubs from the bus.
“He gobbled down a plate of hamburgers and big burly Matt comes out to the bus and starts grabbing two bags over this shoulder and two bags over that shoulder and away he goes,” Thompson said. Thompson suggested he come to Windsor for a possible job at Beach Grove.
“He was a joy to be around,” Thompson said. “He was so laughable and likable, everybody loved him.”
In addition to serving as head pro at Pointe West, Cole also taught the game at Silver Tee, Tecumseh Golf, the Dominion Golf Dome and Kingsville Golf and Country Club. “He spoke in laymen’s terms that his students were able to pick up,” Kingsville general manager Doug Quick said. “He broke down the swing into simple terms.… There are different types of students and you have to be able to say the same thing in different ways. He was able to do that.”
Cole taught weekend duffers and Canadian champions like Cheryll Damphouse and Richard Scott. “He had a big heart and he wore his emotions on his sleeve,” said Kappes. “You knew where you stood with Matt. There was no phoniness about him.”
Cole struggled with a debilitating blood disorder about 10 years ago and more recently he battled dementia and was living in a Leamington rest home. Kappes and another childhood golfing buddy, Brad Walsh, took him out for nine holes at Erie Shores last October. “Something told me we shouldn’t put it off till spring,” Kappes said. Cole didn’t play every hole, but at the urging of Kappes and Walsh, he got out of the cart at one point and hit an iron from 150 yards that came within two feet of the flag. Kappes encouraged Cole to drop another ball and try again. He missed the flag by a foot with that swing.
“It’s something Brad and I will talk about for the rest of our lives,” Kappes said.
Cole leaves behind three children and one grandchild. A celebration of his life was held Wednesday at the Riverside Sportsmen Club.