Lucas Spahl has golfed with a few celebrities, but one stands out above the rest — Charles Barkley.
The former Shepherd Hill Regional golf star served an internship in the summer of 2018 at Myopia Hunt Club north of Boston in South Hamilton. A member invited him to play with him in the Sean McDonough Celebrity Golf Classic at Boston Golf Club in Hingham. Each team bid on celebrities to play with them, and Spahl’s team had the highest bid for Barkley.
“He could not have been a nicer person,” Spahl said. “He took the time to hang out with me and get to know me as a 20-year-old kid at the time.”
Barkley’s golf game was surprising as well.
“He’s way better than TV shows,” Spahl said. “His golf swing is actually not that bad.”
Over the years, Spahl, the interim head pro at the Creek Club on Long Island, has played with financial executive Charles Schwab, New York Islanders forwards Matt Barzal and Brock Nelson, and 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Jensen Castle.
Spahl, 26, wanted to become a golf pro ever since he was 13. His mother would drop him off at Dudley Hill Golf Club, and he’d play 36 holes. Bob Davis is a friend of Spahl’s father, and he also played at Dudley Hill.
Many years earlier, Davis had taken part in the caddie camp at Sankaty Head Golf Club on Nantucket, and he sponsored Spahl to enter the camp as well. Spahl attended the camp the summers before his freshman, sophomore and junior years at Shepherd Hill.
“It’s the only golf caddie camp left in the entire world,” Spahl said. “You stay on site on Nantucket Island. You work for about two months. As a caddie, you learn the ins and outs of private club life, you learn how to mature as a young kid. It’s run kind of militaristically. Everybody gets up at 7 a.m. Bed has to be nice and neat. We had inspection at 8 a.m. We raised the flag every morning. A lot of traditions, a lot of rich history within the camp.”
Campers paid $5 a day for room and board, and Spahl estimated he earned $6,000 to $8,000 each summer caddying.
“It’s the best job you can have as a youth in the entire country,” Spahl said. “It’s unbeatable.”
Worcester native Donald Morrison Smith founded Camp Sankaty in 1930, and he directed it for decades.
“It’s a good feeling to continue a connection between Camp Sankaty Head and Worcester County over 80 years after it started,” Spahl said. “Both places hold a special place in my heart and are ones that make me smile when I think of my time there. I hope the connection is still going strong and will reach the 100-year mark soon.”
Spahl met many high profile people while caddying at Sankaty Head. He estimates he interacted close to a dozen times with Bill Belichick. The former Patriots coach was a member at the club, and he spoke to the 55 caddies at the camp.
“As a 14-year-old getting exposed to and having a conversation with Bill Belichik,” he said, “I was a legitimate kid in a candy store. I didn’t know if I could form sentences while talking to him.”
Chris Drury, president and general manager of the New York Rangers, also spoke at the camp. So did John Ashworth, co-founder of Ashworth Golf clothing, and former UConn basketball coach Jim Calhoun. When Spahl applied for one of the college scholarships that the Sankaty Head members granted to caddies, he sat down for an interview with Sankaty member Jack Welch, chairman and CEO of General Electric, as well as presidents and CEOs of other Fortune 500 companies.
“Now that I look back on it,” Spahl said, “I’d still be nervous to this day, but as a 15-year-old kid, it’s like, ‘I know these people are important, but I don’t know how important they are.’ ”
At Sankaty Head, Spahl met staff members who urged him to attend Methodist College in North Carolina, where he could play Division 3 golf and major in the PGA Professional program. Unlike most Division 1 golfers who play year-round, Spahl interned at golf courses in the summer.
Spahl went on to intern at Chicago Golf Club and serve as an assistant pro at The Patterson Club in Fairfield, Connecticut, before joining the Creek Club as an assistant pro for the 2023 season. Early this year, the head pro, Tom Cooper, left to take a job in Florida, and Spahl was promoted to interim head pro in June at the exclusive, private country club.
He has recently begun interviewing to become the head pro on a more permanent basis.
Spahl also has worked as an assistant pro the past three winters at McArthur Golf Club in Hope Sound, Florida.
Some day, Spahl would like to work at a golf course in Massachusetts. His parents, Michael and Vicki, still live in Dudley, and his three older brothers and their families live in the state.
Spahl captained the Shepherd Hill golf team for three years, and if memory serves him correctly, he lost only one match, to former Wachusett Regional standout Owen Quinn. In stroke play, he averaged under 36.5 strokes per nine holes. He and Catherine French, who went on to play for Assumption, led the Rams on the golf course.
At Methodist, he didn’t get into the lineup for the majority of the time, including when Methodist won the 2018 NCAA Division 3 championship team, but he did win two tournaments there.
About ‘First People in Golf’
Mark Wagner’s new golf book about Native Americans is entitled, “Native Links — The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf.”
So what is so surprising about it?
“Most people, when you say Native Americans in golf,” the Dudley resident said, “they do a double take. You don’t associate Native Americans with the game of golf. Native Americans proudly lay claim to lacrosse, but they have this very rich history in golf and this generation of players now who are being trained and raised on these brand new and beautiful facilities.”
Wagner, 65, spent two years writing the book, which was published by Back Nine Press of Chicago in August.
Prior to writing the book, Wagner interviewed noted golf course architect Rees Jones for the British publication, Golf Course Architecture. Jones designed Wagner’s home course of Blackstone National GC in Sutton and several Native American owned courses, including Lake of Isles, the Foxwoods Resort club which is owned and operated in Connecticut by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
Wagner also interviewed Lori Potter, the Mashantucket Pequot historian. Those conservations prompted him to wonder how many tribes own golf courses. Believe it or not, more than 70 do. Among the tribe-owned courses are Talking Stick in Scottsdale, Arizona, and We Ko Pa in Fort McDowell, Arizona. They were designed by Coore & Crenshaw, who also built the new Pines Course at the International in Bolton.
The tribes use gaming revenue to build casinos, hotels, museums, schools and, yes, golf courses. Nearly all of those courses have been built since the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act encouraged economic development.
So Wagner decided to write about it all. He also wrote about influential Native American golfers, such as Notay Begay, a Navajo who won four PGA Tour events before becoming a TV golf analyst.
Orville Moody, the 1969 U.S. Open champion, was a Native American from the Choctaw Nation. His heritage was downplayed on tour at the time, but the Choctaw Nation named him Indian of the Year and held a parade for him in Oklahoma.
The book opens with a story about Oscar Smith Bunn, who was born on the Shinnecock Reservation on Long Island and became the first Native American professional golfer. In 1896, he and African American golfer John Shippen played at Shinnecock Hills in the second U.S. Open. The British and Scottish golfers threatened to boycott the event, but Bunn and Shippen were allowed to play.
“What I came upon is this kind of subculture in golf,” Wagner said, “that has a really interesting history.”
On Aug. 16, at the invitation of the USGA, Wagner presented his book at the USGA Experience and World Golf Hall of Fame in Pinehurst, North Carolina. “They’ve been very supportive of the project right from the get-go,” Wagner said.
On Oct. 19-21, Wagner will attend the Native American Open at Twin Warriors in New Mexico as an honorary guest player and presenter.
Wagner is a 12 handicapper who will team with Stephen Church in a sudden-death playoff on Wednesday to try to reach his league’s D flight final at Blackstone National.
Wagner founded and directed the Binienda Center for Civic Engagement at Worcester State University until he retired two years ago. He still teaches part-time at Worcester State.
To purchase Wagner’s book for $29.99, visit amazon.com or https://back9press.com/pages/native-links.
Ideas welcome
You can suggest story ideas for this golf column by reaching me at the email listed below. Comments are also welcome.
—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter @BillDoyle15.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Nantucket camp helped Dudley native Lucas Spahl on road to becoming golf pro
