PHOENIX – Every junior golfer dreams of playing and winning on the PGA Tour.
For the fortunate few like Scottsdale’s Matt McCarty, the dream is actually lived out.
Not long after capturing his maiden title in just his third career start last October – McCarty defeated Germany’s Stephan Jaeger by three strokes at the Black Desert Championship in Ivins, Utah – he sought a way to give back to his former junior golf circuit, the Junior Golf Association of Arizona.
The left-handed McCarty said he was first congratulated and then asked by longtime JGAA executive director Scott McNevin about the possibility of him sponsoring one of their tournaments.
His response? An adamant “yes.”
“That just seemed like a no-brainer,” McCarty, 27, said. “Happy to give back in that way.”
When it came to stamping his name on a tournament – the Mesa Junior Championship – that carried some extra “sentimental” value. It wasn’t just because the June event was one of the first offered by the JGAA after being founded in 1983.
No, it was the host site that meant so much to him: Dobson Ranch Golf Course.
“I qualified for Junior World (Championships) at Dobson when I was in high school. That’s actually where I met the coach at Santa Clara originally,” said McCarty, a five-year player for the NCAA Division I Broncos.
His dad, Scott, has also been a member of the men’s club at Dobson Ranch for about 25 years.
While McCarty was still competing for Scottsdale’s Desert Mountain High School, Scott said his son would have won the club championship at the Mesa course if not for a particularly slow member in his grouping. Per its men’s club rules, if a group doesn’t finish each nine-hole stretch in a certain allotted time, the whole group is penalized two strokes. So, instead of a slim victory, McCarty officially ended up in third place.
Scott said he himself had won the club title back in 1997, the year Matt was born. That meant a father-like-son moment with Matt joining an assembly of winners with plaques mounted in the Dobson Ranch bar was not in the cards.
“That still sticks in his craw,” Scott McCarty said. “At the time, it would have been a really cool thing for him. … Now, it’s kind of a funny joke when he’s sitting (at the bar).”
McCarty joined just three other JGAA alumni to support a junior tournament via title sponsorship. All three are former PGA Tour winners. Bryce Molder is a current sponsor of a Scottsdale invitational and Charlie Beljan and Michael Thompson are past sponsors.
Due to his event schedule on the PGA Tour, McCarty said he will not be able to make an in-person appearance at the newly dubbed Matt McCarty Mesa Junior Championship on June 25-26. However, he said he hopes to be a part of the festivities in some way, perhaps with a Zoom call.
With the event in late June and the high Valley temperatures that comes with that, McCarty said he doesn’t know if he “could last two days out there anymore.”
“A lot of respect for those kids being out there and playing in the heat,” said McCarty, who has spent the last few summers in Chicago to help with his tournament travels. “I wish I could be there, but at the same time, I don’t envy that anymore necessarily.”
Scott McCarty said he will be in attendance one of the tournament days.
Despite lacking McCarty’s physical presence, every tournament winner ranging from the boys and girls 10-and-under age groups to the top championship divisions will receive a custom Ping carry bag. Each will be engraved with the new tournament name.
In addition to McCarty’s role of Ping ambassador, McNevin said the JGAA has maintained a longstanding partnership with the golf club company.
McNevin also said he is trying to work out a deal with another one of McCarty’s sponsors, Adidas, so that every one of the projected 200 kids get a clothing prize on the first tee.
Brian Herring, a longtime friend of the McCarty duo, knows a thing or two about that same first tee, as he was the Dobson Ranch golf instructor from 1998 to 2018. He remembered Matt playing in the course’s Friday rounds and always being “a very consistent ball striker.”
“Matt was one of those kids that didn’t impress you but he was so consistent. … That transition from his senior year in high school to his freshman year in college completely changed him as a player,” said Herring, who is now the general manager of Toka Sticks Golf Club in Mesa.
It wasn’t more apparent to Herring that McCarty had a real future in the professional game than at the 65th Tyrrell Wyoming State Open in 2021. McCarty, then 23 and two months removed from college, shot an 11-under-par 59 in the first round and finished at 22 under for a six-stroke victory. Not only was it his first professional win but his 54-hole total of 188 remains the lowest in tournament history.
“You don’t just show up…shoot 59 and win by six. … (His dad) Scotty, he’ll downplay it, ‘Yeah, he’s OK,’” Herring said. “You tell him how good his son was and he just said, ‘Yeah, he’s still got work to do.’”
In fact, trophies didn’t come at all through his first two seasons on the Korn Ferry Tour, the pathway to the PGA Tour.
But once he broke through at the Price Cutter Charity Championship last July, the floodgates broke open for three wins in a six-week span. McCarty’s efforts meant automatic promotion to the grandest stage in golf, as three Korn Ferry wins has granted players PGA Tour membership since the 1997 season. He became the 13th to accomplish the feat and just the second to win on the PGA Tour in the same year – Jason Gore was the first in 2005.
“A lot of validation of the hard work I put in kind of throughout my entire life honestly,” McCarty said. “I continue to talk about just having that childlike curiosity with the game, always wanting to get better. I think that love of the game I developed playing JGAA events at that age was so important for me.
“That perspective can be lost at times…and I think sponsoring this event has been a way even in the last couple weeks to kind of remind myself of that, too.”
David Ricciardelli, McCarty’s former high school teammate for four years, saw his development firsthand and both pushed each other to be better.
“My claim to fame is I actually was the number one (at Desert Mountain) at that point,” said Ricciardelli, who played his college golf for University of San Diego.
“(Matt’s) passion and love for the game … it brings out the competitiveness in him that I don’t think he could even say there’s other things that do it (the same).”
Ricciardelli recalled watching a 15-year-old McCarty consistently pepper flagsticks with 5-wood in hand but it really dawned on him what his friend was capable of in his junior year of college.
In October 2018, the two were competing in the Alister Mackenzie Invitational hosted by California when McCarty fired a career-low 61 in the second round.
“He was in the group behind me, and I swear to you I didn’t see him hit one (shot) outside of 6 feet,” Ricciardelli said. “I knew it then, and ever since then, it’s been like a stepping stone (for him).”
McCarty said he hopes his sponsorship of the Mesa Junior Championship will be “a standing event.”
Long term, he also wants to help improve accessibility to golf for Arizona juniors. With course fees becoming increasingly more expensive, McCarty wants to offer aspiring golfers plenty of chances to maximize their potential.
“Obviously the JGAA is a part of that…but working with courses in the Valley and making sure juniors have times to go out and play,” McCarty said. “And maybe that’s not only in the summer when it’s, you know, 125 degrees would be nice, too.”
Ricciardelli, who won the Bryce Molder-sponsored JGAA event in 2015 with the alum in attendance, said McCarty has the “perfect story” for today’s Arizona juniors.
“Seeing just the rise for Matt, Matt has a perfect story for these juniors,” Ricciardelli said. “He’s not a private (golf) club guy. … He’s a genuine person.”
McCarty said he is frequently asked by parents and kids what is the key to developing into a professional-caliber player.
“Golf was always fun for me, but at the same time I did it to compete,” McCarty said. “Competitive mindset is super important but also having that with the enjoyment for the game is something that honestly I was able to have as a kid because of the JGAA.”
The Matt McCarty Mesa Junior Championship tees off on June 25-26.
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