Paul MacDonald says Steven DiLisio is a rock star. And he says that caddying for him last week as he tore it up at The Country Club in Brookline to win the Massachusetts Amateur golf championship was one fascinating experience.
“He is the real deal,” said MacDonald, 56, who carried DiLisio’s bag, and offered vital advice and support throughout last week’s tournament — the most prestigious amateur championship in the commonwealth.
“He’s a bonafide star in the making,” MacDonald said. “What that means going forward, time will tell.
“He’s just a lot of fun to be around. This was one of my biggest thrills on a golf course — just to be a part of it and to watch him play. He was tremendous. I hadn’t seen him play in a year, and I was amazed at how much better he got in that time.”
Both MacDonald and DiLisio, 21, come from Swampscott. MacDonald is a member of Tedesco and DiLisio golfs at Salem Country Club. They have both been around golf all their lives.
“I’ve known him since he was around 6,” MacDonald said. “I used to take him wherever he needed to go: Rhode Island, New Hampshire … but it was all for the good, especially when this (the Mass. Amateur) happens. He worked very hard for that.”
DiLisio became the first North Shore golfer to win the Mass. Amateur since Ted Carangelo in 1965.
MacDonald was originally supposed to carry the bag through the first two (stroke-play) rounds, with DiLisio’s father, Dana, taking over if and when he qualified for match play.
But, said MacDonald, things jelled so completely that “he told me he wanted me on the bag for the rest of the tournament.”
Said DiLisio, “I think we were just playing well and at that point, we had a good thing going.
“I’d had Paul on the bag before. He’s good. He’s always helpful. He’s good at reading putts. Plus, he’s a competitive guy, and I like that.”
Lest there be any hard feelings, Dana DiLisio gave MacDonald his blessing.
“He said, ‘take it. He’s all yours,'” MacDonald said.
Caddying is a lot different at the competitive level than it is when you’re a teenager carrying the bag at Gannon on a Saturday morning, when the extent of it is finding the ball and, perhaps, cleaning it.
“We talk about club selection,” MacDonald said, “and the wind is a very big thing. You keep track of how the wind is blowing. And I try to keep him focused and make sure he knows where the pin is. You get a pin sheet every day.”
“It’s important that a caddy also likes to compete, and Paul’s a really competitive guy,” DiLisio said. “I mean, he’s a very good golfer. He wants to win. He’s not afraid of the moment, or the pressure, or the shots I want to hit.
“If you have an inexperienced caddy, he may be nervous and it’s a bad vibe. But Paul’s certainly confident, and that helps.”
For his part, MacDonald said, DiLisio was even-keeled throughout.
“He’s very easy-going and unassuming,” he said. “He’s very focused, but he’s also engaging. He has a sense of humor, and he’ll tell you what’s on his mind. If he doesn’t like something, he’ll let me know.”
As the weather got hotter last week, so did DiLisio.
“After the first round, I had a feeling that this could be a very good week,” MacDonald said. “He birdied the first hole, and it’s one of those holes where if you par it, you’re likely to win the hole. And he just got better and better as the week progressed.”
The heat really didn’t worry MacDonald too much, especially last Friday when the thermometer was hitting 90, with humidity to match.
“It was hot,” he said, “The adrenaline keeps you going. You know, you just keep going.”
And when it was all over, DiLisio wasn’t too tired to celebrate with his friends and family.
“He went to Salem Country Club with his parents and grandfather, and he took the trophy with him,” said MacDonald. “And he drank a beer from the trophy, just like the way they do it with the Stanley Cup. He certainly deserved it.”
MacDonald is genuinely happy for him.
“It’s just rewarding,” he said. “It made me happy to see him succeed at that level. His mother (Cheryl), father, grandfather (Vinnie) … all the time they put into it, and he finally did it.
“This was the big one,” he said. “This is the biggest you can win in Massachusetts as an amateur.”
DiLisio, who will return to Duke University for his senior season, is by no means finished. He qualified for next month’s U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst in North Carolina, and is playing this week at the Porter Cup tournament in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
More than anything else, DiLisio said MacDonald was a good companion.
“I was with him 10 hours a day,” he said. “Drove in with him to the course. We had a good time, a lot of laughs. He keeps the mood light, but when the time came to get down to it, we did.”
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
