Mattson: junior golf guru
Three of his pupils in Drive, Chip and Putt championships Sunday
Three young golfers from the Capital Region are in Augusta, Ga., this weekend, competing in the Drive, Chip and Putt national finals at the home of the prestigious Masters tournament. That makes six area juniors who have advanced through three stages of qualifying to compete at Augusta National Golf Club since 2016.
The common thread among them is Anders Mattson, a Queensbury native and PGA teaching professional. A former director of instruction at Saratoga National, he built his own indoor training studio in 2019 called Anders Mattson Golf, and virtually every prominent junior golfer in the Capital Region has prospered from his tutelage and facility.
“This is amazing,” said Brayden Dock, a 15-year-old from Queensbury who will be playing in the national finals for the second straight year. “When there is snow on the ground, you can come in and play. It’s great.”
It is difficult for any golfer at any age in the Northeast to maintain their swings and putting strokes through the winter months.
That makes the accomplishment of having three of the 40 boys who will compete Sunday from the Capital Region all the more remarkable.
“It’s a pretty neat place to be able to have,” said Tanner La
Torre, 12, who qualified for the Drive, Chip and Putt finals along with his brother Mason, 9. Both live in Nassau.
Mattson, a three-time Northeastern New York PGA Teacher of the Year, has worked with junior golfers for more than two decades, but the instruction was limited in the winter by the weather.
“We didn’t have a home for indoor instruction for the wintertime,” Mattson said. “As we know up here, it’s several months almost. I had the idea to do something a little bit bigger than what I’ve been doing in the past in the wintertime. I wanted to have a home for all these kids to come train and come practice, something near their home.”
Anders Mattson Golf opened in May 2019. Mattson said when he first started working with juniors around 2000, he had less than a dozen students. He now trains between 80 and 90 youngsters.
“I think it’s the culture that we create here,” he said. “It’s a combination of having all the good players here being able to train together, and they want to be together, too. It’s a ‘pulling up’ system. The older kids pulled the younger kids up, and the whole process has really continued.”
The studio has three Trackman hitting bays, where players can hit into screens depicting various courses from around the world. The computer also measures swing speeds.
In the middle of the building is an 800-square-foot putting green with various contours and regulation golf holes. “It’s a lot of putting and then some fullswing stuff,” Mattson said. “It covers 75 percent of golf; 25 percent is outside.”
His staff includes teaching pro Bob Cain, who instructs during the offseason from his job as head teaching professional at Saratoga National, and Kayla Radliff, a certified trainer from Premier Golf and Fitness in Clifton Park, who offers golfrelated exercises for the students.
“She comes in two days a week, and we do a dual workout with the kids,” Mattson said. “It’s golf-specific. It keeps them engaged and knowing that it’s part of the game, as well. A lot of them will train on their own down at Premier. I want to make sure that the kids know that it’s part of the situation if they’re trying to be better golfers.”
As a member of the Titlelist Leadership Advisory staff, Mattson also helps the young players with equipment.
Most of the top players compete in numerous tournaments, both in and outside the area, during the golfing season. The studio allows them to keep pace with players from climates that allow year-round golf.
“You put in the work and the time, you’re eventually going to see improvement,” said Dock, who won the Section II individual championship as a sophomore at Glens Falls High School. “This past year, I started to do practice a lot more, and it has shown in my tournaments. When you get into higher events and see how much effort other people put in, it motivates you to start putting in that same amount of effort, if not more, to reach that highest level.”