Faith and Hard Work is Par for the Course By Michael Curet



As a child, Len Mattiace remembers attending the early Sunday morning Mass with his family so he could spend the afternoon playing golf.

These days, he is still attending Mass when he’s in town at his home parish of St. Paul in Jacksonville Beach with his wife and his two daughters. Playing more golf on Sunday afternoons, however, would be just fine for the 41-year-old PGA Tour veteran. That usually means he’s made another cut on tour – a feat that has not been easy for the two-time PGA Tour winner and Masters runner-up since suffering a severe knee injury in 2003.

Len, at the top of his game that year, suffered a blow that athletes hope never happens – a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and MCL (medial collateral ligament) in, not one, but both knees. The injury occurred on a family ski vacation in Colorado just months after he nearly won The Masters in Augusta, Ga. – losing in a playoff to Canadian Mike Weir. It would end a 10-year run of success on the PGA Tour for Len, who was 17th on the money list in 2002 ($2.1 million) with wins at the St. Jude Classic in Memphis and at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Now, more than five years after slowly putting the pieces back together, Len is returning to familiar form in both mind and body.

“We got through it!” said Len, who points to wife Kristen as a major factor in his ability to bounce back and perform at a high level. “We knew it would be tough. However, if you quit, you’ll never get it. If something is possible, I’m going to do it. I really don’t know any other way. It’s the way I am.”

A native of Jericho, N.Y., the Italian-born Catholic, has played five weeks in 2009 and already tied for sixth at the Nationwide Tour stop in Panama, and has a top 25 finish at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA Tour – which earned him his biggest paycheck in almost four years. He is committed to playing a full Nationwide Tour schedule, with the possibility of four PGA Tour events. If he finishes in the top 25 on the Nationwide Tour, he regains his playing status on the regular PGA Tour – a privilege he eventually lost after struggles in his game following the skiing accident.

After the injury, Len has had his share of roller-coaster rides, making only seven cuts in 44 events played on the PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour over the last two years. That trend changed recently when Len seemingly found a silver lining in his cloudy golf game thanks to hard work and the help of PGA Tour Academy instructor Todd Jones.

The Mattiace family takes in a Yankee game at spring training in Florida. From left are Noelle, Kristen, Len and Gracee.

“Todd’s done great things for me in the last five to six months. I’ve gone from an off the charts ranking to being pretty competitive. I’m playing similar golf to what I was when I was 30th in world rankings. I just need to keep at it.”

An invigorated Mattiace was prepared to travel to the ends of the earth to show off his rejuvenated swing. In December, he journeyed to Argentina, then to South Africa, where he shot 12 under par and was in contention on the final day. Earlier this year, he spent a week in Australia and two weeks in New Zealand with some success.

It’s that kind of determination that wife Kristen has grown to love about her husband. “My father once told me that he didn’t care if I married a garbage man – as long as he was a hard worker,” she said. “I met Lenny when he was in his fifth year at Wake Forest when he could have gone straight to the PGA Tour. When I saw that he stayed that extra year to get his degree in sociology, I knew he would be successful.”

It was a match made in heaven, according to Len, who was set up on a date by mutual friends. “It was love at first sight,” he said. “She was coming out of Duquesne University looking for a teaching job and the only teaching job she was offered was in Jacksonville. There are too many stories like that in my life for me not to have a strong belief in God and his plan for us.”

Len’s arrival in Jacksonville years earlier took a different road. One of five siblings (two girls, three boys) born to Lou and Joyce Mattiace, the family moved to Florida when Len’s two older brothers Ken and Bob began playing golf at the University of South Florida. “I was a junior golfer at the age of 14,” Len recalls. “My dad liked Jacksonville the best and I enrolled at Nease High School. The family settled in Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach – nearly a stone’s throw from the PGA Tour headquarters and the TPC Stadium Course, where he spent countless hours.

The home course would be the site of one of his career lows and highs in the same week. In March 1998, against the world’s strongest field, Len found himself one shot out of the lead when he walked up to the 17th hole, pumped up with adrenalin, and overshot the green with his iron shot. Overcome with emotion as his dying mother looked on from the gallery in a wheelchair, Len settled for an eight on the famed-par 3. Arguably, the most publicized hole in the world had just gotten a little more famous as thousands of fans and an international live television audience watched. The high-point came afterwards as Len reflected on what he was able to share with his mother that day.

“Four months later, she was gone!” recalls Len. “I believe God played a role in allowing her to watch me that weekend. I was playing great. I kept looking over at her because I knew I was competing against the best players in the world on my home course and in a short time I’d never see her again. She spent three of the last four days watching me from a wheelchair. It was special!”

It was a defining moment in Len’s career, which began to take off after that day. He continued to climb on the money lists – culminating in 2002 with his first career victories. At home, there were big changes on the horizon. His one-year-old daughter Gracee was walking in ‘98 and the Mattiaces would have another daughter, Noelle, in 2000. Also in 2000, he formed “Len’s Friends,” a foundation that has raised more than $400,000 for the First Tee of Jacksonville.

Then there was that unlikely Sunday in Augusta in 2003 when Len found himself ever so close to winning the coveted “green jacket.” Len was in 10th place entering the final round at The Masters – only his second time playing the tournament. He found himself staring down Tiger Woods and others. By day’s end, Len had carded the second-lowest final round in Masters history, a 65, which sent him into a playoff against Mike Weir.

“It was a magical day,” Len remembers. “Everything went right. You always dream about playing that way at Augusta. It was a great day even though I lost the playoff.”

It’s hard to believe just eight months later, Len would find himself stuck in a wheelchair – his livelihood ripped away from him, his faith tested.

Days after the December 2003 skiing accident, Len was operated on by one of the world’s best knee surgeons – Dr. Richard Steadmon in Vail, Colo. He vowed Len’s recovery would be 100 percent, which was music to his ears. It didn’t, however, make the recovery any easier – mentally or physically.

“I literally had to learn how to walk again,” said Len. “Some guys come back from one ACL injury like Tiger (Woods) did. I had torn ligaments in both knees and a busted knee cap. I didn’t have one good

Len Mattiace reads “The Giving Tree” to students in Los Angeles, Calf. as part of The PGA Tour’s player charity visit in 2005.

leg to stand on. It was brutal from January to May.”

His wife Kristen was the stronghold. There were eight-hour days of rehabilitation six days a week and three months in a wheelchair.

“It was difficult because you see this guy who had this happen at the peak of his career after working so hard to get there,” she said. “I remember him practicing how to walk up and down the hallway after he got out of the wheelchair. He would look at me and ask, ‘Does this look okay?’”

Len said the entire experience made them a stronger couple. “We were pretty strong to start out,” he said. “But Kristen had to pick it up. I couldn’t do much around the house and with the kids. It was a very low moment for me. There’s a lot of thinking time for reflection and prayer. It was one of the toughest periods in our lives.”

Although the results came slow, Len was able to avoid that sometimes inescapable “rock bottom” that professional golfers hit during their careers.

“You have to be balanced and if you don’t have that balanced support system, it will catch up with you one way or another,” Len shared. “I think you have to have that system in place to maintain longevity.”

One choice he wished he hadn’t made was the decision to come back too soon. Four months after the injury, still limping and aided by knee braces, he returned to play Bay Hill, The Players Championship and The Masters. “People didn’t tell me I was crazy. Instead, they encouraged me. I wasn’t ready. It was absolutely the worst thing I could have done because I got into some really bad habits that took a long time to break. I came back in four months from two bad knees and Tiger took nine months for one knee. It was a bad choice and 2004 and 2005 were miserable as a result.”

Even though he was hitting shots 30 yards off line and into spectators, he never thought about quitting. “How can you have confidence and believe in yourself if your shots are flying into the gallery?” remarked Len. “That’s how far off they were. It’s hard to measure the mental side of how much it affects your game. Give up? That’s not me!”

But Mattiace did consult his resident “sports psychologist” – his wife Kristen. “People talk about sports psychologists and I’ve had a couple of good relationships with a couple of them over the years, but Kristen is right up there,” said Len. “She always talks to me about exercising my mental capacity. I can go out and hit the shots, but if I don’t execute it mentally, it’s not going to work. Kristen has gotten me into the zone. There are about eight good examples during my career when I’ve talked to her in the morning and she has pushed me to shoot 64 or 65 that day.”

That extra coaching goes back to the early days of their marriage when Kristen travelled the tour with Len before their kids were born, and she witnessed the competitive fires burning first-hand. In her own way, she, too, has the same competitiveness.

When she arrived in Jacksonville, Kristen attended Holy Family and immediately got involved in the parish. “I was very active in the church for eight years and found myself at times telling Msgr. Logan how things should be done,” comments Kristen. “I co-taught confirmation, was co-director of youth ministry and served on the parish council. I can remember Msgr. Logan asking Lenny ‘Do you know what you’re getting yourself into with this woman?’”

Just like their parents, the Mattiace family attends Mass together when Len is not traveling on the tour, and when he is, he still tries to attend Mass when it doesn’t conflict with Sunday tee times.

But Sunday Mass is only part of the picture when it comes to relating to their kids. “It can’t just be church,” said Len. “That’s not enough. Little things might pop up during the day and right or wrong questions are always there. What would Jesus do in this situation? I love it when priests correlate the gospel to today’s world. Those are really the winning messages.”

Now, their oldest daughter is preparing for confirmation and the youngest is set to make First Communion this year. “I love the fact that we’re able to feel the tradition of my family and Len’s family,” said Kristen.“When we all go to Mass together, we take up a whole row.”

As things are looking up in Len’s golf career, he doesn’t take anything for granted. “If it all ended tomorrow, I’d be fine with it. I thank God every day for my family and the life he’s given me.”

Don’t count on it ending anytime soon however. The highly-competitive Len said with a smile, “I have more passion for the game now than ever before. The burn is still there.”