Teacher Knows Best

Matt Schalk channeled the advice he’d given his star pupil daughter into capturing the biggest title of his career.

When Matt Schalk of Colorado National Golf Club in Erie battled through 50 mph gusts to win the 2022 Senior PGA Professional Championship in New Mexico last October, he may have stumbled upon an entirely new method for shooting lower scores. Pro golfers nearing the magical 50 mark typically enter golf’s version of boot camp, vigorously prepping for the senior tour mulligan. Not Schalk, who didn’t even enter any events when he first turned 50 and had played maybe once a month over the past decade.

He was focused instead on working with an A-list of students, starting with his record-breaking daughter and current University of Colorado golfer, Hailey Schalk, and including talents ranging from PGA Tour winner Kevin Stadler to Hadley Ashton, currently the state’s foremost junior female player.

To Schalk’s way of thinking, he’d already had his opportunity. Back in his 20s and early 30s, Schalk pursued the PGA Tour dream. He was cashing mostly small checks while playing the Hooters Tour and competing in state opens. He did taste success, shooting 61-69-64 to win the 2002 Wyoming Open, a year after he’d led the Colorado Open on the back nine of the final day before dropping to third. The quest ended when he and his wife, Leslie, started a family, which now includes Hailey, 21, Blake, 19, and Jaze, 10.

“It was time to be a parent. It was my time to help them,” says Schalk, who in guiding his daughter’s ascent through the junior ranks began to see the game through an entirely different—and much more focused—lens.

“I think that break made me a better golfer,” he says.

Touching All The Bases

Matt Schalk grew up in Boulder playing just about every sport. He fell in love with golf at age 10, when his parents joined Boulder Country Club and he occasionally worked with Les Fowler, the CU head coach for almost three decades. After the family dropped its membership, Matt shifted to baseball. He didn’t pick up a club again until he was in college. This time, it stuck.

With an eye on improving, Schalk in 1993 went to work at Lake Valley Golf Club in Niwot under then-head-pro Jim Phillips, back when it was still a public course. Schalk became the club’s Swiss Army knife, seamlessly shifting from hand-picking the range to running the cart barn to flipping burgers. He was even pressed into duty on the beverage cart. “That was probably the worst day of my life,” he now laughs.

Schalk also played and practiced relentlessly, saving his money to take lessons with renowned instructor Mike McGetrick. As a naturally gifted athlete and steely competitor, Schalk lived and died over his latest tournament result.

“I chased it. Every shot meant something,” Schalk says. He hit a low point in 2000, when he ballooned to 88 in the local U.S. Open qualifier at Ptarmigan Country Club. He then received “the letter,” the USGA missive informing him that he’d been suspended from the next year’s U.S. Open qualifier. With that chip on his shoulder, he re turned in 2002 to shoot 67 and win the local stage at Buffalo Run, then did it again in 2003 with a 64.

Meanwhile, he was also realizing he had a pas sion and talent for teaching, which could provide a more dependable source of income. When he worked with McGetrick, his goal was to become a better teacher as well as player. Schalk ascend ed the ranks at Lake Valley as it turned private in 1997, eventually becoming the head profession al—and highly regarded by members for lessons.

In 2007, he was recruited to Vista Ridge Golf Club, which would soon become Colorado Nation al and the home of the Colorado Buffs men’s and women’s golf programs. His willing ness to learn every task and under stand the entire operation paid off again. Under entrepreneurial owners like Stacy Hart and then Steve Kerr, Schalk heard the same message: “We need to make money, go figure it out.” So, he did.

Over the past 15 years, he’s been totally immersed in the ever-evolving golf course business, eventually be coming a part-owner of CNGC. At various times, the principals owned and managed courses across Colorado and in Arizona, Las Vegas and Chicago. Schalk was intimately involved in buying seven courses, and in expanding operations to boost the bottom line. Most recently, the ownership sold Colorado National, Bear Dance and Plum Creek to Heritage Golf, which now owns 28 courses nationwide.

Schalk’s expertise expanded from making birdies to dissecting budgets, running pro formas and dealing with mergers and acquisitions. But he also had another project that took up considerable time—and brought him the most joy.

Fire And Ice

Hailey Schalk announced herself to the golf world in 2017, when as a Holy Family ninth grader she shot 65 in the first round of the girl’s high-school state championship en route to winning the first of her three state titles (only one opponent, Covid, could prevent her from getting a fourth). As Hailey cleaned up on the state and then national stage, Matt was backing her every step of the way, ultimately coaching her high school team.

He may have been the perfect golf parent, in - spiring her with his expertise and passion, but then stepping aside when she had the tools to go it alone.

“He stopped golfing to help me,” says Hailey, who led CU in scoring as a sopho more. “I’m so excited for him.”

While sharing those rare elite ball-strik ing skills, father and daughter were oppo sites in on-course demeanor. Hailey was initially quite shy, and even after blossom ing into a savvy champion she has always kept an extremely even keel on course, flashing a smile whether shooting 66 or 78. Dad followed a different drummer.

“Fire? Yes, he has that,” laughs Hailey. “We’ve learned from each other. It’s helped us both find a happy medium.”

As Matt watched his daughter break through, he began to understand better what he’d done wrong and what he need ed to fix to play national-caliber golf. In his playing days, Schalk would clean up on the local level, but never fared well on the big ger stage, where he tried to be too perfect. “I was mentally not good enough to handle the national level,” he admits. “I didn’t trust myself.”

Turning 50

When the head pro at a Colorado club is set to turn 50, as a courtesy the PGA Section often arranges to hold the state senior club pro event at his or her course. No thanks, said Matt, who instead would be caddying for Hailey in the 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Westchester Country Club in New York. He did manage to find some time for himself, winning the 2021 Colorado PGA Senior Match Play and the ’22 Colorado PGA Senior Professional Championship title at the Club at Flying Horse. He also found a perfect way to sharpen his physical and mental skills—with Colorado’s most famous athlete on one of the state’s most famous courses.

Schalk plays regular matches, friendly but highly competitive, at Castle Pines Golf Club with John Elway, Patrón founder and current Clear Golf executive Ed Brown and Paul Lobato, the club’s director of instruction and a longtime mentor for Schalk. Even as Schalk passed on entering several over-50 tourneys,

Lobato saw his friend’s game and attitude sharpening.

“I can count on one hand the shots he’s missed in the last couple of years,” Lobato says. As Schalk got more serious about his game, he didn’t have to worry about getting into shape. “He looks like he’s 35 years old,” Lobato says.

“He’s a freak of nature,” says Jason Dumler, who’s known Matt since high school, serves under him as head pro at CNGC and has seen him go straight from three hours in the car to the first tee and stripe it.

“He does not warm up, and he’s hitting his drives the best ever,” Hailey says of Matt’s center-cut 300-yard missiles. Now a seasoned collegian, she knows how to throw a little shade. “He got this new putter—I think it came from Lost and Found. It’s very ugly, very old, no idea of the brand,” she says.

You can forgive Hailey for not recognizing the make of Matt's putter. After all, the heyday of the Acushnet Bull’s Eye predated her birth by a couple of decades. Matt's extremely short-shafted flat stick was so rusted from grip to blade that the shaft snapped when he casually leaned on it on the 13th green of his first round of the Colorado PGA Senior Professional Championship.

In an emergency re-shafting between rounds, it was accidentally shortened further, to a comical 31 inches (most putters are 34 or 35 inches). Matt kept making putts and kept the putter, though it may not matter. After he’d broken it in the state tournament, he played the last five holes in two-underpar—while putting with his sand wedge.

TWO-WAY STREET: The games of both father and daughter blossomed from their relationship.

“DON’T

WOE ME”

When the 264 best club pros from around the country gathered at the Twin Warriors Golf Club in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, last October for the Senior PGA Professional Championship, Schalk had just one goal: Finishing in the top 35. That would qualify him to play May 24-28 in the 83rd Annual KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship against the brightest lights of the PGA Champions Tour, including Bernhard Langer, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Fred Couples, and Colorado’s own Shane Bertsch. An extra bonus: The event will be held on the recently opened Fields Ranch East in Frisco, Texas, the new home of the PGA of America headquarters.

Having never made a 36-hole cut at a national club championship, Schalk booked his return flight for the evening after the second round. Even when he entered the last round in the final group, he clung to the idea of just making it to Frisco.

After opening with rounds of 69-68-66, Schalk described the weather for the final 18 as the worst he has ever encountered. With rain and a steady 30 mph breeze that gusted to 50, he was playing on an extremely tight Twin Warriors course where every shot could lead to a lost ball. Even with the wind at his back, Schalk bogeyed the first, a gettable par 5, and had three bogeys through five holes. “Right off the bat, I’m thinking ‘What do I need to do to stay in the top 35,’” he admits. But soon after, his better instincts took over, especially channeling all the advice he’d given Hailey—and the copious notes he’d saved from every lesson he’d ever given.

“I tried to remind myself of what I tell them. ‘Stay in the moment. Don’t be hard on yourself. Everyone will struggle. Bogey is OK.’” The biggest achievement was keeping a positive attitude, even when Schalk hit it stiff through a 40-mph gust, then watched the ball get blown down a swale to 35 feet away as he approached the green.

“Don’t woe me” was the rallying cry, Schalk says. He played the remainder of the round at even par and beat Utah’s highly regarded Steve

Schneiter by two strokes. (Three other Coloradans also qualified for Frisco: Doug Rohrbaugh, Micah Rudosky, and Dave Arbuckle.)

Schalk won $26,000 for his efforts, plus a Rolex and victory bonuses from his apparel and gear sponsors, Nike and PXG. It also gave him a berth in the qualifying tournament for a Champions Tour card last December at the TPC Champions course in Scottsdale. He didn’t get his card and would have faced a quandary if he had. He’s now spending much of his free time with his youngest son Jaze, who at 10 is already ahead of where big sister Hailey was, golf-wise, at that age.

For now, it’s all eyes on Frisco. “I definitely want to make the cut,” says Schalk. If he does, and if he finds his comfort zone, anything can happen. As it is, he may not be the most enthusiastic member of his group. Hailey will be on the bag to keep dad calm, and she can’t wait: “I’m so excited. This is so cool!”

Contributor Andy Bigford, a Lake Valley Golf Club member, wishes he had taken more lessons from Matt Schalk when Schalk was the head pro there.

By Jon Rizzi