Out Of The Gates Strong: Lenane, Johnson, Naumec Lead After Round 1 At GreatHorse
By Steve Derderian sderderian@massgolf.org
HAMPDEN, Massachusetts (July 7, 2025) – Comfort was hard to come by at GreatHorse on Monday. The opening round of the 117th Massachusetts Amateur Championship played like a moving target. One moment the air was still, the next it was swirling. Club selection turned into guesswork. Raindrops came and went in quick, scattered waves. The ground was firm. The air was heavy. Some shots bounced and ran. Others stopped in their tracks.
While most of the field battled to adjust, three players found their footing better than the rest. Joey Lenane (George Wright Golf Course), Matthew Johnson (Charter Oak Country Club), and defending champion and GreatHorse member Matthew Naumec all posted 4-under-par 68 to share the clubhouse lead as the race to make match play got underway.
Lenane, the 2023 New England Amateur champion and winner of the Mass Amateur Public Links last year, leaned on discipline and patience to steady the ride. He played sharp, smart golf from tee to green. Even after a couple of makable birdies slipped by, he got some momentum by making a 17-footer on the par-3 3rd (207 yards). After burning the edge on the par-3 15th, he hit a wedge from about 125 yards to 7 feet and made it to get to 5-under. His only blunder was a three-putt bogey at 18, which kept him from holding the lead alone.
“I feel like my game’s in a really good spot, and I just hit it really well off the tee and into the green, and gave myself a lot of looks,” Lenane said. “At this course, you get in your head. It’s pretty intimidating to look at. I try to keep it simple… just pick small targets.”
Lenane, who recently finished his junior year at North Carolina State, has entered this week with a heightened sense of urgency as he expects this to be his last summer as an amateur. He has spent most of the summer months competing in elite amateur events out of state, with a top 20 finish in the North & South Amateur Championship, plus the Sunnehanna Amateur and Northeast Amateur.
“This one’s kind of been circled on the calendar for a while because I didn’t get to play the Mass Open,” Lenane said of the Mass Amateur, where he’s made it as far as the quarterfinals (2023). “This is likely going to be my last Mass Amateur for hopefully a while, with professional golf coming up. So giving it one last go and hopefully I can go with a bang, that’d be the dream.”
Joey Lenane chips to the 9th green in the first round of the Massachusetts Amateur Championship on Monday at GreatHorse. (Matthew Hart)
Johnson, a bonafide mid-amateur and former St. Michael’s College standout, pieced together a round built on control and confidence, hitting all 18 greens in regulation and keeping the ball in play off the tee. That might sound routine, but for Johnson, it was anything but. A couple of months ago, he cracked his longtime driver and has been bouncing between different replacements ever since.
“I was trying some other stuff they’d send me from a warranty,” he said. “And then I ended up last week, I just went on eBay and bought a used one of what I had before.” He hit three good drives on the range Monday morning, stuck it back in the bag, and decided to just trust it. “I just hit three good ones on the range and said, ‘Go figure it out.’”
He did. And on a day when GreatHorse threw the kitchen sink at some players, Johnson felt fully in control. “It feels really good that everything kind of clicked on the same day,” he said. “Still got tomorrow before you move on, but it feels good to have a good first round and be able to build on that.”
Naumec, sporting a white polo with the host club logo on the chest, is looking to make his road to match play a bit easier this time around. After shooting consecutive 73s and snagging the final match play spot last year, Naumec was in full form Monday, knocking down five birdies, including on three of the first four holes. He closed it out with a nifty par save, eerily similar to how he finished Round 1 in 2023 at Essex County Club. It worked out well for him as he made it all the way through to the final match that year.
One shot back is Trevor Drew (Long Meadow Golf Club), who continued his hot summer with a 3-under 69. Drew, a rising sophomore at Western Kentucky, recently won the Lowell Cities in record fashion. He was bogey-free through 12 and at one point was tied for the lead with Lenane and Johnson.
One of the biggest moves of the day came from recent Fordham graduate Jake Mrva (Worcester CC), who shook off a rocky start to put together one of the most exciting stretches of the tournament so far. After three bogeys in his first six holes, Mrva didn’t look like someone heading for red numbers, but everything changed around the turn.
He stuffed a wedge to just a few feet on the par-3 17th and rolled in the birdie. On 18, got another. Then he birdied the 1st to make it three in a row. But the moment of the day came on the par-4 2nd, where Mrva holed out from the left rough for eagle, capping a four-hole stretch that flipped his entire round. He signed for a 2-under 68, putting himself right in the mix heading into Tuesday.
“I was able to kind of stay there mentally and wait for good stuff to come with patience,” said Mrva, who credited his Worcester caddie Ryan Kelly for keeping his composure. “Once you get hot, you just kind of keep going with it.”
Jake Mrva tees off on the 8th hole Monday at GreatHorse. (Matthew Hart)
He played the round wearing a Framingham Country Club hat, a nod to where he made a run to the Round of 16 for the first time at last year’s Mass Amateur. It was a breakout moment that showed him he could compete at this level. This year, he had a different kind of lift, as two of his Fordham University teammates, AJ DePaolo and Patrick Ginnity, surprised him and followed most of his round. Another teammate, Tucker Silva (Longmeadow Country Club), is also in the field.
“It was great seeing them,” Mrva said. “Last year told me I can hang with these guys… this year, I’m riding that high.”
Round 2 tees off at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. If there’s a tie for the 32nd and final match play spot, get ready for a sudden-death playoff right after stroke play wraps up.
Here are some other tidbits from Day 1 at the Massachusetts Amateur Championship.
The USGA’s revised exemption criteria, which award U.S. Amateur spots to state and AGA amateur champions, has clearly helped elevate the Mass Amateur in recent years. According to the World Amateur Golf Ranking® (WAGR®), the field’s strength has nearly doubled since the addition, rising from 38.5927 in 2022 to 74.0148 last year. This year’s winner will again earn a direct berth into the U.S. Amateur, while all semifinalists will be exempt into final qualifying in 2026.
Mike Calef (Pine Oaks Golf Club) has already secured a spot in the U.S. Amateur via his victory in the Rhode Island Amateur Championship two weeks ago. The two-time Massachusetts Amateur champion became the first person to have won both titles, having won the Massachusetts Amateur in 2012 and 2013. Calef, who shot 2-over 74 in Round 1 on Monday, is seeking to become the first to win both in the same year. Either way, his spot at The Olympic Club is already secure.
Aside from Naumec, several other GreatHorse members are still right in the thick of contention to make match play. Former Hartford standout A.J. Oleksak finished the day 3-over 75, good for T29. Billy Walthouse, who joined GreatHorse when he became pro, shot 76. He had an adventurous drive on Hole 1 that hit the cart path and ended up past the hole (435 yards total), but settled for par. While he entered as a favorite, 2023 champion and Vanderbilt standout Ryan Downes struggled with the flat stick and shot 77 for T47, meaning he’ll have plenty of work ahead to make match play. His 2023 caddie, Cole Banning, a Bryant University golfer, matched his score.
In a rare case of a course owner playing in a state amateur championship, Guy Antonacci had some steady stretches, ultimately shooting 6-over 78. His caddie was Director of Instruction Chris Tallman, who finished third overall in this year’s Mass Open.
Wyatt Barlage (Nehoiden GC) is used to giving it his all for a good cause. The 22-year-old Wellesley native ran 3 hours, 39 minutes, 17 seconds at this year’s Boston Marathon in memory of his father, Greg, who passed away in 2022 after a six-year fight with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Running with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society team, Barlage said his dad taught him, even in the hardest moments, to lead with love, stay positive, and put family first, lessons he’s sure to carry with him this week at GreatHorse.
As has been the case with every Mass Golf championship held at GreatHorse since 2020, the back nine in the opening round provided a much stiffer challenge than the front. On Monday, it was an entire stroke difference (40.05 back, 38.67 front), with just three birdies coming on the par-4 18th. One of them came from the 2006 champion, Ben Spitz (George Wright Golf Course). The par-4 1st, by contrast, was the No. 18 Handicap with 38 birdies (over 25% of the field; 65% at least made par).
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