Trio eager for Augusta
Dock, LaTorre brothers to drive, chip, putt at the home of the Masters
Inside the Anders Mattson Golf studio, Brayden Dock was practicing an 8-foot putt that broke slightly right to left. The intent was to simulate a putt that Dock jarred last year at the Drive, Chip and Putt national finals at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
Dock, a 15-year-old from Queensbury, is one of 80 boys and girls who qualified last summer and fall for this year’s national finals. He is one of only seven returning from last year. Three Capital Region junior golfers who will be competing with Dock joining the LaTorre brothers from Nassau — Tanner, 12, and Mason, 9 — next Sunday morning, April 3.
Live national TV coverage will be provided on Golf Channel beginning at 8 a.m.
“It was perfect,” Dock recalled of his Augusta exposure last year. “It was a great experience, and I’m really excited to get down there.”
Thanks to making his final putt, Dock tied for second last year in the 12-13-year-old division. (He qualified in 2019 as a 13-year-old, but the 2020 finals were pushed to 2021 because of COVID -19.)
This isn’t necessarily about winning, as the LaTorre boys understood as they watched Dock last year on television and dreamed of being there. Now they have that opportunity.
“I want to see everything that I can there,” said Tanner, a seventh-grader who was No. 1 player on the Ichabod Crane varsity in the fall. “I want to see the 18th hole, the clubhouse, everything.”
“I’m looking forward to taking a picture on the grass part, where it says ‘The Masters,’” said Mason, a fourth-grader.
This year’s trio brings to six (including Dock twice) the number of Capital Region golfers who have made it in the seven years of the Drive, Chip and Putt national finals. Nicole Criscone of Clifton Park qualified in 2016, and Kennedy Swedick of Altamont made it in 2017. Mattson has been an instructor for each of them.
“I’m stressing embracing the experience,” said Mattson, founder/owner of the indoor practice facility, “embracing the scenery around, the crowds and the patrons, the experience of the dinners, the lunches, the breakfast thing with the other kids. That’s the main focus for us. They’ve already made it. If they finish first or seventh or 10th, that’s almost irrelevant. We train those shots enough, they’re part of the game of golf. We’re not stressing it overly, just telling them to have a game plan for each shot and letting the kids enjoy the experience.”
Dock, who won the Section II individual championship in the fall as a sophomore at Glens Falls High School, figures to be the most comfortable. The putt he made to close his outing last year was the one he was practicing earlier this week. He was putting from a closer distance than 15 feet to compensate for the speed of Augusta National’s greens, which are hard to simulate at any facility, let alone an indoor one.
“I want to do better this year,”
he said. “I had one pretty good chip, and then my next one I duffed it a little bit. It’s hard to top the putting. It would nice to make the 15-footer again.”
The biggest difference, Dock said, is “no masks this year. Last year, we had to COVID test right before it, and if you tested positive you weren’t going to be able to play. That was the most nervous part about the whole entire trip, the COVID testing.”
Since he qualified for the first time in the fall of 2019, Dock said he has grown about seven inches, to 5-foot-8, and gained 25-30 pounds.
“He’s hitting it a hundred yards further than when he qualified, but he’s still the same player,” Mattson said. “He chips and putts as well as anybody, and that’s what the competition is heavy on.”
All of the finalists had to go through three rounds of qualifying: local (Town of Colonie), sub-regional (Town of Colonie) and regional (TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn.).
Between the LaTorre brothers, Tanner is the more serious golfer. According to his parents, Shawn and Makenzie LaTorre, Mason took up the game just to be around his older brother.
Yet at the regional final, Mason, who aspires to be a chef for his brother if he becomes a pro golfer, earned his berth first.
“For the youngest one to go out first,” Shawn LaTorre said, “and the oldest one to sit back and watch him perform, watch him win, then for him to go off and do what he had to do, it’s pretty remarkable.”
It was Mason’s second attempt at qualifying, Tanner’s fifth.
“There was a lot of pressure,” Tanner admitted.
The LaTorres became connected with Mattson and his facility through the PGA Junior League. The older LaTorre brother played on a team that included Dock and other prominent area juniors.
“Mason was always there,” Mattson said. “He was the one in the cart, watching all the matches. We knew he was coming up, but he was just a little too young to participate. Now he showed up big in those qualifiers, and his brother didn’t want to give him the spotlight. We watched Tanner pick up his game, knowing his brother was going to be down there, too.”