TAMPA, FLORIDA | The first few seconds of an interview with a column subject are usually reserved for pleasantries. Rarely, if ever, is there much learned from that exchange, but Steve Maddalena’s first sentence ended up being a harbinger for a broader theme in his amateur golf career.
“I don’t know why you are doing an article on me,” Maddalena said with genuine seriousness. “I’m just surprised.”
Most of the people who know what he has accomplished are not surprised at all. The lifelong Michigan resident who has spent most of his time in Jackson – a small city 80 miles due west of Detroit in the middle of the mitten – is the type of player who has quietly worked as hard as anyone to reach the upper echelon of senior amateur golf in the past few years.
Most senior amateurs’ games slowly diminish in their late 50s and early 60s because of loss of clubhead speed, but the 62-year-old Maddalena has engineered a dramatic improvement in play during that time period. Around 2015-17 when he first started senior amateur golf, chronic back pain stunted any hope he had at a consistent competitive schedule and Maddalena was a non-factor on the national level. In the last four years, however, he has completely changed his swing to alleviate that pressure and the results have been thoroughly impressive.
“I was really having a tough time physically for a couple of years,” Maddalena said. “So I got with a teacher up in Michigan named Gary Robinson who helped me revamp my golf swing and made me change how I would address the ball and how I would finish through. It saved my back. I used to hang back and hook everything, but now I swing more around my body and hit everything straight or left to right. I got a lot more consistent.”
Maddalena won the 2019 and 2020 Golf Association of Michigan Senior Men’s Player of the Year and finished second in the 2020 Golfweek Senior National Match Play before embarking on a sensational 2021 where he finally broke through on a national stage. Maddalena beat the likes of Randy Haag, Gene Elliott and Mike McCoy at the Trans-Miss Senior before dominating the Senior Porter Cup where he raced past Canadian stalwart Dave Bunker by five strokes.
He had four other top-10s in national Society of Seniors championships, which pushed him to where he is now at No. 26 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking for seniors and No. 11 for those ages 60 and above. Of no small note, Maddalena also shattered a 30-year drought in the Jackson County Open last year, an event he captured six times from 1984-92 in his youth shortly after college, and won the GAM Senior Championship for the second time in the past three years.
His performance led to him being a first-team selection on the Global Golf Post All-Amateur Team.
“I’ve been doing this for four years now where I’ve been playing more national stuff, and I’ve gotten better pretty much every year,” Maddalena said. “I got more comfortable traveling and playing on different types of grass and in different conditions. Before I would pretty much only stay in Michigan and would never get out of the state unless it was a USGA event.”
None of it would have been possible without the significant swing change that took multiple years to bear fruit. Maddalena started the project in 2018 and says he didn’t get fully comfortable until three years down the line.
“There was certainly a stretch there where, as great as he was, we thought him competing at that level could be over because of his back issues,” said playing partner Mike Raymond. “To see him rebuild that, he absolutely put the time in and he was right back where he was on top.”
Senior amateurs tend to avoid such arduous tasks for various reasons. One is that they usually know their tendencies by that point in their golf life, so changing seems counterproductive. Another reason is that the desire to put in that amount of effort has usually waned.
If you want to find the broad-shouldered, often hat-less Maddalena on any given evening with decent enough weather, it’s a sure bet he is out hitting balls or meandering around the short game area at the Country Club of Jackson, where he is a member.
Maddalena had neither issue. He knew a swing change was mandatory in order to continue playing, and his work ethic is phenomenal by senior amateur standards.
If you want to find the broad-shouldered, often hat-less Maddalena on any given evening with decent enough weather, it’s a sure bet he is out hitting balls or meandering around the short game area at the Country Club of Jackson, where he is a member. He spends nearly half of his practice on short game, a higher percentage than most.
He does it purely for competitive golf, as playing recreationally doesn’t have nearly the same appeal to him. And he is definitely not doing it for the sake of impressing those around him.
“I would bet 95 percent of the people at the club never knew he won the Porter or Trans-Miss,” Raymond said. “It goes right over their heads. He won the Pine Valley Invitational and someone asked him, ‘Have you ever played Pine Valley,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I had a chance to go out there.’ He just never advertises anything.”
This takes us back to Maddalena’s modesty.
He never considered himself a natural talent, even from a young age. His father, Roger, owned a flooring company that Maddalena’s great great grandfather founded, setting the backdrop for a blue-collar mentality that would extend into all areas of Maddalena’s life. His work career has been centered around the office furniture business, and unlike many older amateurs, he went into business right after college and never gave professional golf a modicum of thought.
After getting a full ride to the University of Michigan where he was an All-Big 10 performer for the Wolverines, Maddalena went to work on constructing an amateur career worthy of being inducted into the Michigan Golf of Fame back in 2007. He has three state amateur wins (1980, 1990 and 1995), a GAM Men’s Player of the Year award (1988), a GAM Championship victory (1989) and six U.S. Amateur appearances over a three-decade period, among setting a handful of other local records along the way.
The scouting report on Maddalena is that he has reached those heights because he never shows up to a tournament without being fully prepared. Even last week at the Gasparilla Invitational where he shot 82-78 and admitted disappointment, his process didn’t change as he honed in on each shot.
That’s a reputation he’s developed over many years. It’s only grown as he’s reversed the clock with more than a little hard work.
Top: Steve Maddalena may be 62, but he's not playing like he's in the sunset of his career.
E-Mail SEAN