By Aidan McLaughlin
MARBLEHEAD, Massachusetts (May 19, 2026) – The North Shore had a little bit of everything Tuesday: extreme heat, a burst of afternoon thunder and, by the end, a playoff worthy of the long wait.
Through it all, North Shore natives Greg Badger and Kevin MacIntyre, of Salem Country Club, emerged from a crowded finish at Tedesco Country Club to capture their first Mass Golf title as a team at the 29th Massachusetts Senior Four-Ball Championship.
“It was a two-man effort all the way along…but it’s something special,” MacIntyre said. “We’ve only done this once together in the Senior Four-Ball, but we’ve played a lot of games together.”
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MacIntyre had a pretty good idea what the playoff would require, and he used the break beforehand to prepare for it.
“We went and hit a few balls in between, and specifically I was hitting driver and 6-iron because that’s what I knew I would have in,” said MacIntyre, who ultimately delivered the winning approach.
That preparation proved useful. Both MacIntyre and Badger found the fairway off the tee, leaving MacIntyre with the exact club he had rehearsed moments earlier. With 6-iron in hand, he hit the lone approach that found the green, setting up a stress-free two-putt par.
Barboza also found the fairway, while Cook’s tee shot climbed a little higher than he wanted. From there, neither Cook nor Barboza could get their second or third shots close enough to apply pressure, allowing Badger to close it out with a 5-foot made putt for par.
Starting the round with a share of the lead, Badger and MacIntyre continued their success in Round 2, carding a 2-under-par 68 to be the sole leaders in the clubhouse right around noontime. Badger would birdie the par-4 15th to drop to one-under on the day.
A bogey on the par-3 3rd would be erased when MacIntyre would hit one of the best shots of the day, having a near ace on the par-3 8th hole where he would then tap home his putt for the 2. “It was perfect yardage, 120 yards for my pitching wedge, and I hit it good, and I thought it might go in, but it pulled up short about a couple of inches,” MacIntyre said.
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The other group bidding for their first four-ball win would be Bruce Barboza and Jason Cook, of Segregansett Country Club. Teeing off at 12:30 p.m., they would start just two shots back of the lead and pull within just one stroke when Cook would make birdie on the par-3 third.
Barboza would then tie it up for them on the short, uphill par-4 6th (276 yards). After a bogey on the 10th, they would get the bounce back they needed the very next hole when Barboza striped a drive down the right side of the fairway on the dogleg par-4, eventually getting up and down for birdie.
Needing just one more birdie for the solo lead, they almost got it on the 18th. Barboza found himself in front of the green with a wedge in hand, eyeing down his third shot. With green to work with, Barboza would hit a low chip running out towards the pin and eventually hitting it, but the ball came off the club face a little too hot, lipping out of the cup, and sending it to a playoff.
Founded in 1900 but incorporated in 1903, the 123-year-old course got its name after a ship that sank along the rocks of Swampscott in the early 19th century. The course was then designed in the 1920s by Eugene “Skip” Wogan, the renowned architect who apprenticed with Donald Ross, with additional design contributions from Wayne Stiles & John Van Kleek and Ron Forse, in modern times.
The course originated with six holes on Phillip’s Beach, just two miles from where it stands today but was bought out in high-stakes real estate deals before finding its forever home nestled between Marblehead and Swampscott.
This course plays to just under 6,500 yards from the tips, with just two par 5s that close the front nine and open the back nine. In today’s day of big distance off the tee, Tedesco’s grounds crew keeps pin placement tricky, nicely paired with fast greens.
