Former Leominster High standout golfer Mike Elliott is back in Central Mass. as an assistant pro at Oak Hill Country Club in Fitchburg, and no matter how much the temperature rises this summer, he probably won’t perspire.
Elliott, 57, worked in Qatar from 2011 until last year. Qatar has become somewhat of a hotbed for golf, but the Middle Eastern nation has always been hot and very humid. Elliott said the temperature usually reaches 130 degrees from May to September and doesn’t drop below the high 70s in the winter.
“You just get used to it,” Elliott said. “I got to the point where I wasn’t even sweating anymore. You can drink a bottle of water on every hole for 18 holes, and you never have to go to the bathroom. That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced. You had to stay hydrated. A lot of people got dehydrated over there.”
Whenever he returned home to Leominster for visits, he struggled with the lower temperatures.
“I was freezing,” he said. “It was in the 70s here, and I still had two, three sweaters on.”
Elliott coached the national golf team in Qatar. When he took over, the junior team had been relatively successful, but the senior team, with golfers ranging in age from 16-40, hadn’t been.
He coached two 16-year-old golfers with handicaps of 7 and 8 into scratch golfers within a year and a half. In less than three years, they were a plus-2 and a plus-3. The Qatar senior team became No. 1 in the Middle East for several years.
His team competed in the World Amateur every other year and in the Asian Amateur every year. So he’s been to Mexico, Japan and Korea and several more countries in Asia.
When the pandemic hit and his position at Doha Golf Club in Doha, the capital of Qatar, was reduced to six months a year, he returned to Leominster.
His father Bumps Elliott, was the pro at Fort Devens Golf Course, and the family moved to Leominster when Mike was 16. That year, he qualified at The Country Club in Brookline to play in the US Amateur in Chicago. He didn’t reach match play there, but he still had a great experience.
Playing for Leominster High in 1984, Elliott won the Central Mass. golf championship and finished second in the state.
His father shot a 61 to set the course record at Fort Devens, and Elliott tied it the following week when he was a junior at Leominster High. Elliott has shot a 61 five times, and he has carded five holes-in-one in tournaments.
Devens Golf Course was closed many years ago, and Red Tail Golf Course is located near where it used to be.
“I was upset when they got rid of it,” he said, “and actually the holes are still there.”
Elliott played Red Tail when his brother-in-law Chris Kasheta was head pro there. Kasheta is an assistant at Pleasant Valley CC now. Elliott’s sister and Kasheta’s wife, Kathy, has also been a golf pro for 25 years.
In the 1980s, Elliott played on the Sunshine Tour in South Africa, in Canadian Tour events, on tours in Europe and in mini-tour events all over. Then he returned home, working jobs as an assistant pro at Monoosnock CC in Leominster and Westminster CC and teaching at the Sterling Driving Range while playing on mini-tours in Florida in the winter.
Later, he served as head pro at Monoosnock for a season before working in Germany from 1995-2010 at several courses as a teaching pro, head pro and director of golf. He was born in Germany while his father was stationed there.
Elliott’s son, Codyis in Germany now, studying computer coding and playing for a semipro baseball team.
While in Germany, Elliott considered leaving golf.
“You watch people play every day and you don’t get to play,” he said. “Then after doing that for years and years and years, working 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and you don’t get to play golf, you just get burned out.”
Injuries also took their toll. He couldn’t walk for six months in 2008 after wearing out his back playing golf. His L4 disc exploded, and he broke a vertebra. Surgery fused his discs together.
He also broke his left kneecap during a televised team tournament in Germany when he fell while swinging a club. Following surgery, he didn’t play golf for a year and a half.
He changed his mind about leaving golf when a friend helped him find a job in Qatar.
“It’s all mental,” he said. “You’ve got to force yourself to enjoy it. Bottom line is if you like what you’re doing, you’re going to enjoy it, and I love teaching, and I love working with kids, seeing people who are totally beginners hitting their first balls in the air, and also the opportunity I had in Qatar working with top players and watching them go around shooting 66s and 65s an playing great golf was fun as well.”
He’s having fun now working at Oak Hill with head pro Bucky Buchanan and assistants Zach Duffy spirit Malcolm Negoshian.
“The people here,” he said. “The course is amazing. I’ve liked it since high school. It’s a great test.”
“He’s had a lot of experience,” Buchanan said, “in coaching and teaching and with kids and tournament operations. He’s a seasoned golf pro and we’re lucky to have him.”
Top college golfers head to Rhode Island for Northeast Amateur
Some of the best college golfers in the world over the years have played in the Northeast Amateur Invitational Golf Tournament at Wannamoisett Country Club in Rumford, Rhode Island.
Some Northeast Amateur champions have gone on to enjoy stellar PGA Tour careers, including Ben Crenshaw, Hal Sutton, David Duval, Luke Donald, Dustin Johnson spirit Collin Morikawa. Tiger Woods, Fred Couples, David Love III spirit Jim Furyk also played in the Northeast Amateur, but didn’t win it.
Northeast Amateur tournament chairman Ben Tuthill said he expected Morikawa to excel on the PGA Tour after he won at Wannamoisett in 2017. Morikawa had proven what he could do when he lost in a playoff in a Korn Ferry Tour event the year before after his freshman year at Cal.
“He was that special when he was in college,” Tuthill said. As a pro, Morikawa has gone on to win both the PGA Championship and the British Open.
Tuthill wasn’t so sure about Scottie Scheffler, who is ranked No. 1 in the world. Scheffler played in the Northeast Amateur five times, but did not win.
“I would have never thought he’d get to where he is, quite honestly,” Tuthill said. “I love Scottie, and he’s a great player, but he never looked like a world beater.”
Tuthill credited Scheffler for showing up at Wannamoisett one year after getting stuck in the airport in Chicago for 12 hours.
“If it were me,” Tuthill said, “I would have said, ‘No thanks, I’m just going to go home,’ but he stuck it out, he came, he played, he was tired too, he didn’t” t play that great, but I give him a lot of credit.”
The 61st Northeast Amateur will be held Wednesday through Saturday and the field is expected to be the largest in tournament history. Recently, 105 golfers were registered to play, but Tuthill expected some withdrawals from those who qualified for the US Open. The previous largest field was 96, which the tournament prefers so the golfers can play in twosomes.
Tuthill said interest in the Northeast Amateur has skyrocketed in the second year that the event has belonged to the Elite Amateur Series. Each of the seven tournaments in the series awards points that lead to exemptions into PGA Tour and USGA events. Caleb Surratta rising sophomore at Tennessee who won the series last year and finished third at Wannamoisett, is scheduled to play in the Northeast Amateur again this year.
Dylan Menante will try to become the first golfer to win the Northeast Amateur in three consecutive years. In 2021, he won as a member of the Pepperdine golf team, and he repeated last year after transferring to North Carolina. He’ll return to UNC in the fall as a fifth-year senior. Menante shot a tournament-record 19-under last year.
Donald was the last golfer to win in back-to-back years in 2000 and 2001. Jay Sigel, who won the Northeast Amateur in 1984, 1985 and 1991, will be the featured speaker at the sponsor dinner at Wannamoisett CC on Tuesday. Many of the golfers stay with families in the area during the week, and some families remain close to the golfers they house. After Morikawa won the Northeast Amateur, his hosts at a home two blocks from the course took him out for drinks to celebrate. Six years later, whenever those hosts from 2017 text him, he answers them.
The tournament is open to the public, and there is no change.
Last year, Donald Ross expert Andrew Green completed a $4 million restoration of tees, bunkers and greens at Wannamoisett, a 1914 Ross design which hosted the 1931 PGA Championship.
Visit NortheastAmateur.com for scoring updates throughout the tournament.
—Contact Bill Doyle at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Golf: It’s cool for Oak Hill assistant pro Mike Elliott to be back in CMass