M.J. Mastalir turned 70 years old earlier this month, and on Thursday he received a belated birthday gift that certainly was worth waiting for as he was voted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.
The Denver resident is a former CGA president who spearheaded the acquisition of a CGA-owned golf course — now known as CommonGround Golf Course — on land that had long been the site of Lowry Air Force Base. Also in a volunteer role, he served on the powerful USGA Executive Committee, eventually becoming a vice president of the association.
On Thursday, the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame Board of Directors selected Mastalir to become the lone person enshrined in the 45th class of inductees. That induction will take place May 21 at the Santuary in Sedalia.
“It’s a nice honor — and humbling,” Mastalir said in a phone interview. “I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve worn a lot of different hats in golf, I’ve met a lot of nice people and gone to a lot of nice places.” (Mastalir is pictured above in blue, flanked by two current Colorado Golf Hall of Famers, Kent Moore and the late Jim English.)
Also honored at the May 21 dinner will be three Colorado Golf Hall of Fame award winners: the new Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado, Jennifer Kupcho of Westminster, and Rick Polmear of Greenwood Village. The JGAC will receive the Distinguished Service Award, Kupcho the Golf Person of the Year Award, and Polmear the Lifetime Achievement Award. (See details about those honorees below.)
Mastalir will become the 139th inductee into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, an organization which honored its first class in 1973, when Babe Zaharias, Dave Hill and Babe Lind were inducted.
Mastalir served on the CGA Board of Governors from 1986 to 2007, including a three-year stint as president starting in 1997. It was in his role as the chairman of an ad-hoc golf course committee that he arguably left his most lasting legacy in golf. With the closing of Lowry Air Force Base in 1994, he met with the Lowry Redevelopment Authority and convinced the rest of the CGA board to compete for the acquisition of the Lowry course. Over a period of years, the CGA and CWGA gained ownership of the course, which was then known as Mira Vista. An entirely new course — the Tom Doak-designed CommonGround layout — was constructed at the site and opened in 2009, with a myriad of CGA community outreach and youth development programs continuing to take root there.
Over a decade-long period, Mastalir estimates he devoted more than 2,000 hours to the CommonGround project that became very close to his heart.
“I was leading the charge, so it’s been very gratifying” watching CommonGround develop, Mastalir said. “They’ve really created a place for programs for people. They’ve done a marvelous job.”
In his early days as a CGA board member, Mastalir was likewise a member of the USGA Executive Committee, a 15-person group of volunteers that makes policy for one of the most powerful golf organizations in the world.
During Mastalir’s time on the Executive Committee (1986-93), the USGA laid the groundwork for the “For the Good of the Game” grant program that promoted projects that helped make golf much more accessible to juniors, minorities, people with disabilities, etc. The USGA also established the P.J. Boatwright Jr., Internship Program, which effectively funded an internship position for state and regional golf associations throughout the country.
Mastalir also served as chairman of the USGA Rules of Golf Committee — a very powerful and influential force in the game — from 1988 to ’93.
In addition to trying to expand and improve the game in Colorado and beyond, Mastalir was a fine golfer in his own right. He played a season of golf at the University of Colorado, where he was sixth man during a season the Buffs (as a five-man team) won the 1968 Big Eight Championship and placed eighth in the NCAA Championships. Mastalir went on to compete in two U.S. Amateurs, the first U.S. Mid-Amateur and two British Amateurs.
Mastalir’s time on the CU golf team came immediately after Hale Irwin’s, but caddying for Irwin as he won the 1964 CGA Amateur at Hyland Hills was the event that sparked Mastalir’s own love for the game. He’s long been a member at both Denver Country Club at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.
Mastalir retired in 2010 after spending the last 22 years of his career financing golf courses.
Next year will mark just the second time the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame has inducted just one person in a given class, with Paul McMullen in 1985 setting the precedent.
As for the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame award winners, here’s the rundown:
— Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado (Distinguished Service Award): A combined effort of the CGA and the Colorado PGA, with the CWGA serving as a contributing partner, the JGAC proved a big success in its inaugural year. The idea of the alliance is to streamline, improve and expand the junior golf experience in Colorado, and it hit the mark in 2016.
Membership in the JGAC is up about 16 percent from what it was for the CJGA in 2015, and tournament participation jumped 23.5 percent, not counting PGA Junior League Golf and the Drive, Chip & Putt events.
Kids playing in Colorado-based Drive, Chip & Putt competitions increased almost 15 percent from 2015. For the PGA Junior League Golf in Colorado, the number of kids, teams and facilities participating roughly doubled in 2016 compared to 2015. And if fall projections prove accurate, almost 28 percent more kids will be reached this year than last through the Colorado PGA Golf in Schools Program, with the total for 2016 expected to be 10,101.
Even with some spring events canceled due to the weather, there were more than 80 junior tournaments that the JGAC oversaw in 2016, highlighted by the four major championships for both boys and girls.
— Jennifer Kupcho (Golf Person of the Year): The 19-year-old from Westminster, the CWGA Player of the Year in both 2014 and ’15, took another big step in 2016.
She finished sixth individually in the women’s NCAA Championship finals and qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open, arguarbly the top women’s golf tournament in the world. Kupcho also swept the CWGA Match Play and Stroke Play titles, becoming the first player to do so in 12 years. In winning by huge margins in 2016 (12 and 10 in the Match Play final, and by 19 shots in the Stroke Play), she became the first golfer since the 1980s to win three straight CWGA “majors”. And earlier this month, the Wake Forest sophomore won her first individual title at a college tournament, breaking a Demon Deacons’ women’s program record with a 15-under-par 201 total at the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational, where she prevailed by six strokes.
— Rick Polmear (Lifetime Achievement Award): Polmear, a University of Michigan Evans Scholar alum who has lived in Colorado since 1981, has long been a tireless supporter of the college scholarship for caddies. But he took that support to a new level as the volunteer project manager for the $6 million University of Colorado Evans Scholars house renovation and expansion project, which was completed early this year.
Polmear estimates he devoted about 1,000 hours to the project over the course of three years. The end result is a house almost totally redone on the inside, the addition of roughly 2,000 square feet of finished space (bringing the total to about 18K), and a nifty new outdoor area behind the house that features a combination lighted basketball/volleyball court and a congregating area with brick pavers that Polmear refers to as a “plaza”. All in all, it’s been a huge upgrade for the 50-plus current CU Evans Scholars.
Polmear has served as a volunteer director for the Western Golf Association — which administers the Evans Scholarship nationwide — since 1990.
