When Jeff Martin was playing golf for Portland High in the early 1990s, his 18-hole score could be “anything from 72 to 92.”
Martin, 50, would much prefer a score in the low 70s – or even lower – on Thursday.
That’s when the head pro at Wollaston Golf Club in Milton, Massachusetts, is teeing off with the best 50-and-over professional golfers in the world at the U.S. Senior Open at Newport Country Club in Newport, Rhode Island.
It will be Martin’s first PGA Tour Champions (i.e., the senior tour) event but not his first time competing in one of golf’s major championships. He qualified for the PGA Championship three times (2005, 2008, 2013) and also played in the PGA Tour Deutsch Bank event at TPC Boston in 2004.
“You never want to put limitations on anything. Do I think I can win? Yeah, a little bit in the back of my mind, I do,” Martin said Wednesday afternoon. “But I’m a club professional from Massachusetts.
“I want to have fun. You never know if you’re going to get back to another one but I’d like to make the cut and I’d like to compete and just play as well as I can,” said Martin, a 1992 graduate of Portland High who lives in Attleboro, Massachusetts.
Newport Country Club is a historic, links-style course in the resort town known for its mansions and hosting every America’s Cup sailing challenge from 1930 to 1983. The course hosted the first U.S. Open in 1895, the 1995 U.S. Amateur won by Tiger Woods and the 2006 U.S. Women’s Open.
“You can’t really see the mansions but you can tell it’s Newport,” Martin said. “There’s really only one peek at the ocean. It’s near the water, just not on the water. You feel the ocean breeze and it’s definitely a factor.”
Martin will be in Thursday morning’s first group, teeing off hole No. 1 at 7 a.m. Later in the day many legendary players will start their opening round of the 72-hole tournament. Defending champion Bernhard Langer of Germany, who won last year at age 65, 2022 winner Padraig Harrington of Ireland, and 2021 winner Jim Furyk headline a 156-player field that includes major championship winners Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Justin Leonard.
“It’s all the guys we grew up watching,” said Martin, who played hockey, golf and one year of baseball at Portland High. “Yesterday I played nine holes with Tom Lehman. He won The (British) Open in 1996. Super nice guy.”
In high school Martin worked at Riverside Golf Course in the bag room, but he was not preparing for a career in golf. Martin graduated from the University of Maine after studying chemical engineering.
“I got out (of college) and I didn’t like what I was doing and a friend of mine was working at a club down south and said I should come down there and I could work at the club and that kind of kicked it off,” he said.
Martin was an assistant pro at Biddeford-Saco Country Club in the 1990s. His first head pro job came in 2012 at Norton Country Club in Norton, Massachusetts, where he stayed until taking over at Wollaston GC in 2018.
As Martin approached his 50th birthday in December, he attended the Champions Tour qualifying. He got past the first stage in November at a site in Mississippi, but at the final stage in Arizona a few weeks later fell well shy of being one of just five players to receive a tour card.
He qualified for the U.S. Senior Open by claiming the third and final spot at a one-day, 120-player event at Franklin Country Club in Franklin, Massachusetts. Martin was in a three-way tie for second place after 18 holes. He clinched his spot with a birdie on the second playoff hole.
“I had my son, Cameron, on the bag. He’s 22. He’s caddied for me before,” Martin said. “I got through and got to hug my son. That was a special moment.”
Martin said if he does “catch lightning in the bottle,” and plays well this week it could lead to more senior tour events or at least another crack at the qualifying process this fall when his regular work duties as a club professional lessen.
“I still love my job and the membership at Wollaston is great and I can’t see myself working anywhere else,” Martin said. “But, it’s a chance to fulfill a dream.”
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