After shining at Assumption, Sutton's Jenny Walsh has a bright future in the world of golf
This will be a Mother’s Day to remember for Blackstone National Golf Club staffer Jenny Walsh.
She will celebrate Mother’s Day in the afternoon with her mother, Vicki, her father, Tom, and her older brother, Tommy, by dining at Leo’s Ristorante.
And at 10 a.m. she will graduate from Assumption University at the DCU Center. In between those two events, she will move the rest of her belongings out of her dorm.
“It will just be special to be able to say that I celebrated both Mother’s Day and graduation on that day,” she said. “It’s a big moment in my life and obviously the person who brought me into the world I’ll be celebrating her as well.”
Walsh jokingly told her mother that graduating was her Mother’s Day gift to her, but she did plan to buy her something.
Walsh, 22, didn’t have much of a graduation ceremony four years ago at Sutton High School because of the pandemic. Classes were held remotely from March of 2020 through for the rest of her senior year and senior week activities were canceled.
She was looking forward to playing flute in the school band at her high school graduation as she had the previous few years, but the band wasn’t allowed to perform. Instead of holding a traditional graduation ceremony at Mechanics Hall, a rolling rally was arranged. Walsh, her family and her classmates rode around town in their decorated cars and then drove to the front of the high school. One by one, each masked student stepped out of his or her car, received a diploma from the principal on a makeshift outside stage, got back in the car and drove away.
So Walsh’s college graduation will be her first true graduation experience. She said she was excited, but a bit nervous because of the threat that some graduations could be postponed due to anti-war demonstrations on campuses. Walsh is relieved protests have not been a problem at Assumption.
“If anybody protests, I’m throwing a huge fit,” Walsh said, “because I want my graduation. This is the one thing I want and I’m not having it taken away from me.”
For the past five years, Walsh has worked in Blackstone’s pro shop and for the last three, she’s helped out at the junior camps, PGA Junior League and the women’s league. She’s leaning toward turning pro this summer to teach and enter the PGA Associate Program to eventually become a PGA Class A professional. The process usually takes at least three years.
When she was a freshman at Assumption, many students learned remotely from home, but Walsh lived on campus. Students on campus were quarantined for a while and were later allowed to attend classes if they wore masks. At times, her golf team wasn’t allowed to leave campus to practice and all tournaments had to be completed in one day. For her first tournament, Walsh and her teammates departed at 2:30 a.m. to play 36 holes in New York and returned home that night.
During finals week of her sophomore year, she tested positive for COVID and she had to take her finals remotely from her home in Sutton. Fortunately, her junior and senior years were back to normal.
Walsh began playing golf at Blackstone National when she was 7 years old and participated in everything from the junior intramural program to the club’s PGA Junior League team.
“I enjoyed the game from the start so that allowed me to practice and get better,” she said.
Her love for golf grew stronger.
“I’ve always enjoyed being outside,” she said, “rather than inside and golf is more of a sport where it’s you against the course rather than you against somebody else. So it’s more of a reflection of yourself rather than you facing an opponent, which I find is a really interesting aspect of the game.”
At 9, she began taking lessons from Matt Stephens, currently the club’s general manager. At Sutton High, she competed on the boys golf team and she was the only girl on the team during her junior and senior years. As a senior, she was the team’s No. 3 golfer and repeated as a Dual Valley Conference All-Star.
Then she chose to play golf at Assumption in large part because Stephens was the coach.
“Honestly, he’s been in my life for so long,” Walsh said, “and he’s kind of a father figure because he’s helped me through everything in this game.”
“It’s gratifying,” Stephens said. “As a PGA professional we try to pass on the passion for the game. When we do a clinic for 20 kids, 17 of them might not catch it, but three of them catch the bug and off they go. That’s what we do here. We teach golf, but more importantly we’re trying to teach the passion. It’s a great game and we love getting people involved in it and I’m glad that Jenny fell in love with it.”
Stephens said he first thought Walsh might become a golf pro when she was 12 or 13 because of her dedication to the game.
“I think it’s great that people follow their heart,” he said.
Stephens stepped down as coach after Walsh’s freshman year at Assumption, but she excelled anyway. Last fall, she matched her career-low 74 in the first round of the Northeast-10 Conference championship tournament at The Ranch Golf Club in Southwick and she shot 80 in the second round to finish second in the event. As a junior, she placed fourth in the Northeast-10 tournament.
Assumption plays its home matches at Pleasant Valley CC in Walsh’s hometown of Sutton. Jack Moy, who grew up at Blackstone with Walsh and who was the No. 1 golfer at Sutton High, is a junior on the Assumption men’s golf team.
The 5-foot-8 Walsh comes from a golfing family. Her father and mother both play at Blackstone National and her brother grew up playing there and he also played for Sutton High.
For Sutton High, she shot a career-best 1-over 37 on the front nine at Blackstone. Last summer, she carded a career-low 2-over 74 for 18 holes at Blackstone.
Driving is the best part of Walsh’s game. She credits Stephens with helping her to usually hit the ball 230-240 yards off the tee and into the fairway.
Walsh has fun teaching junior golfers and she wants to help them enjoy golf rather than get frustrated while playing it. Last summer, she began teaching 7-year-old Genna Gannon, who reminded her of herself when she began playing golf at the same age.
Walsh has appreciated growing up at Blackstone and the relationships she’s built there. The waiters and waitresses know what she’ll order because it’s been the same since she was 7: A hot dog with fries and a Pepsi.
“It’s the sense of community,” she said. “How everybody is so close and kind here, that’s what I like the most about being here.”
Walsh is leaning toward turning pro this summer. The process should take a few years, but she won’t have to take the player ability test because she shot rounds of 74 and 80 at the Northeast-10 Conference championship.
“There are a such a lack of women teachers in this field,” she said, “and I talked to so many of the women in the women’s league and they’re like, ‘You don’t know how much we appreciate having a woman teaching us.’”
According to zippia.com, of the nearly 5,000 golf instructors in the U.S., only 19 percent are women even though women are more likely to take lessons than men. Walsh plans to teach men and women.
Walsh is one of two women who teach golf at Blackstone. Assistant pro Morgan Lemieux is the other and her husband Steve is the club’s superintendent. The two got married at Blackstone in October of 2022.
Walsh majored in criminology and minored in environmental science at Assumption. Before she decided to make golf her career, she had considered becoming a park ranger.
Walsh said learning not to dwell on her bad shots has allowed her to succeed in golf.
“It used to be if I got a double-bogey on a hole, I was done for the round,” she said. “Now, it’s more of a reason to fight. That’s nothing to get worked up over. You can come back from it, it’s not the end of the world.”
Ideas, comments welcome
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—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter @BillDoyle15.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: After whirlwind day, Sutton's Walsh embarks on bright future in golf
