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Matt Moison, who is in his 26th year as director of golf at Green Hill Municipal Golf Course, will be one of five recipients of the Thomas S. Green Public Service Award this week.
He admits that he’s not quite sure how to feel about it. While he’s honored, he wonders if he deserves to be rewarded for just doing his job. Of course, such a selfless attitude is one of the reasons why he’s such an effective public servant.
“I always view what I do here at the golf course as just customer service,” he said. “That’s essentially what the job is. It has much less to do with golf than interaction with people.
“So when you ask me about the Thomas Green Service Award, it’s nice that somebody recognizes that the golf world is not just golf,” he added. “It’s first and foremost customer service. It’s also what I do every single day. I guess I have a hard time swallowing people saying, ‘What a great public servant you are,’ because that’s what they hired me to do.”
And that’s what Moison counts on his staff to do.
“I always tell the staff when I hire them that we’re in the people business first,” he said. “We just happen to do it at a golf course. It’s our job to make sure people have a fun time when they come here.”
Since 1988, the Worcester Regional Research Bureau has presented the Thomas S. Green Award to more than 125 people working in municipal government.
The awards ceremony will take place at 5 p.m. Thursday at Mechanics Hall, followed by a reception at 6. The event is free and open to the public. Moison said it will be the first time he’s been to Mechanics Hall.
Others who will receive the award are Joseph Carpenter of the Worcester Department of Administration and Finance, Muaweya “Zack” Razzaq of the Worcester Public Schools, Connor Robichaud of the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission and Cara Stone of the Worcester Public Library.
Moison, 54, believes his award is a recognition of what his staff does every day, including operations manager Art Flagg, assistant pro Matt Foley, ranger Bill Foley and pro shop assistant John Wood.
“You never stand alone,” he said. “I get it, I’ve been the face of the golf course for 25 years, but if people come in, and they don’t know who I am, that’s just as good. If they come, and they’re like, ‘I had a good time, and the guy behind the counter was so nice to us, and we had a great time,’ that could be any one of us.”
Moison said he has the best view of any public servant office in the city — Green Hill golf course running alongside Green Hill Pond.
“For me, it’s 190 acres or whatever it is of open space and smiling faces,” he said.
As the suggestion of former T&G executive editor David Nordman, I nominated Moison for the award, and I will introduce him at the ceremony on Thursday.
As I wrote to the committee when I nominated Moison for the award, he has impacted countless lives for the better at Green Hill. Winner of the New England PGA Junior Golf Leader Award in 2001, he has gone above and beyond the call of duty with skill and enthusiasm.
During his first year at Green Hill, he began a free junior golf camp that has introduced the game to youngsters every year since, with the exception of 2020 when the pandemic hit hard.
In 2009, he named the camp after Danny Rossetti, who died in a car accident at age 26 the previous fall. Rossetti had been a camper for the first few years and later worked in the club’s pro shop and volunteered at the camp. Rossetti’s parents and brothers volunteer at the camp and credit Moison with helping them deal with their grief.
Dealing with the public isn’t always easy, and Green Hill is one of the busiest golf courses in the region, but Moison continues to do his job well and in a polite, friendly manner.
Travelers field again strong
Since the Travelers Championship began following the U.S. Open in 2007, the strength of the field has remained consistently high no matter where the U.S. Open has taken place, tournament director Nathan Grube said.
However, Grube said following a U.S. Open less than a 2½-hour drive away in Brookline and about a 40-minute flight prompted golfers to commit earlier than usual. Rory McIlroy committed months ago. Defending champion Harris English, Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and Brooks Koepka also registered to play.
The tournament will arrange for transportation for the golfers from TCC to TPC River Highlands, as it has since it began being held the week after the U.S. Open.
“The guys really appreciate that, especially the families,” Grube said.
Even when the U.S. Open is held far from Connecticut, the Travelers does its best to make the flight easier.
“It’s great,” Grube said. “We work with the USGA, and they pull their USGA cars right up to the tarmac, and they get out, and they load on the plane and put them through security and the whole deal, and they go. We do that every year.”
English is still trying to regain his form after undergoing hip surgery early this year. He missed the cut at the Memorial at the beginning of this month in his first start since he tied for 55th in the Sony Open in Hawaii in January. He also teed it up in the U.S. Open at TCC.
He had his hip checked out early in his PGA Tour career and learned he had a torn labrum and a bone spur on his hip for a long time. He was told injections and physical therapy would help some, but only surgery to repair the tear and to shave the spur would eliminate the pain. So he underwent surgery on Feb. 14 for a torn labrum.
“So I kind of knew this day was coming,” he said. “I had really been struggling with it probably the last two or three years, having more back issues because of my hip. It kind of reached the breaking point where nothing I really did got it better, so I needed to get it done. With golf, with our season as long as it is, there’s not really a great time to do it.”
Once the hip is fully recovered, English will play pain free for the first time in his PGA Tour career. So he should be better than ever, right?
“Ultimately, I want to be a better golfer every single year,” he said, “but I’m definitely going to have a different range of motion, a lot more range of motion than I’ve had in a long time. For me, it’s just about the pain. I kind of got used to being a 3 or a 4 on the pain scale in my right hip every single day, so I’m looking forward to having less than that and hopefully (the surgery) will help me play longer and just be healthier playing golf.”
Northeast Amateur set for this week
If you couldn’t find tickets to the U.S. Open to watch the best golfers in the world play at The Country Club in Brookline, you can check out some of the stars of tomorrow in the 60th Northeast Amateur Invitational golf tournament Wednesday through Saturday at Wannamoisett CC in Rumford, Rhode Island, just outside Providence.
The tournament is open to the public, and there’s no charge.
Defending champion Dylan Menante of Pepperdine University is scheduled to play. So are NCAA individual champion Gordon Sargent and fellow first-team All-American Cole Sherwood, both of Vanderbilt. Mason Nome and Travis Vick of NCAA champion Texas will tee off. This will be the fourth visit to Wannamoisett for Vick, who played in the U.S. Open this week.
Tournament chairman Ben Tuthill said several amateurs playing in the U.S. Open also will play at Wannamoisett.
Former PGA Tour star John Cook, who won at Wannamoisett in 1978 and 1979, will take part in the sponsor-contestant tournament on Tuesday.
Other past winners include Ben Crenshaw, Jay Sigel, David Duval, Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa.
Last winter, Donald Ross expert Andrew Green oversaw a $3.5 million restoration of tees, bunkers and greens at Wannamoisett, a 1914 Ross design which hosted the 1931 PGA Championship. Each green was expanded after having shrunk over the years.
“They were all pretty circular before,” Tuthill said. “Now they’re all very unique shapes.”
Visit NortheastAmateur.com for scoring updates throughout the tournament.
Catlin takes Baker Trophy
Congratulations to Joanne Catlin of Oak Hill CC in Fitchburg who won the Tournament Division of the Women’s Stroke Play Championship for the Baker Trophy on Wednesday at The Ridge Club in Sandwich. Catlin shot 81-77 for a 16-over 158 total to edge Gina Gallagher of Marlborough CC by a shot.
Catlin is a 22-time Oak Hill women’s club champion and a six-time women’s senior club champion. She was inducted into Oak Hill’s Hall of Fame last year.
Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net. Follow him on Twitter@BillDoyle15
