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Fairways and Greens Beckon Middleburg’s Mascatello By LEONARD SHAPIRO For Middleburg Life
www.middleburglife.net
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May 2014
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here are not many golf courses in Brooklyn, N.Y., where John Mascatello grew up and went to high school. Yet, over the past 25 years of roaming the world watching his clients play golf and recruiting new players to his company’s impressive stable of worldclass performers, he’s seen his share of the finest venues on the planet. Mascatello and his family now live in Middleburg and have become an integral part of the community. He also is well known around the wide world of golf as executive vice president and managing executive for golf with Wasserman, one of the largest sports agencies in the world. He’s been representing golfers for most of the past three decades, and among his earliest clients were Scott Verplank, Scott Hoch and Roger Maltbie, soon to be joined by John Daly nine months before his breakthrough victory in the 1991 PGA Championship at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis. Among his company’s clients now are some of the game’s brightest stars— Rickie Fowler (who tied for fifth in the 2014 Masters), former Masters champion Zach Johnson and Jason Day, winner of this year’s Match Play Championship. Mascatello always had an interest in sports, and after graduating from the University of Vermont and law school at American University, he went to work for ProServ, a prominent Washingtonbased sports agency run by Donald Dell, a former nationally ranked tennis player. Dell had several golfers under contract, and Mascatello worked there for five years before partnering with another ProServ alum, Bud Martin, to start Cambridge Sports International. Not long after they started, they added another partner, Terry Reilly. “Donald Dell was a great mentor for a lot of us,” Mascatello said. “At the time, they were doing mostly tennis and
Photo Courtesy of Virginia Golfer Magazine
John Mascatello
basketball. We thought there was a future for golf, and we went out on our own with some other financial partners. Donald said, “let the players decide. If they want to stay, they can stay, if they want to go (to Cambridge), they can go.” Cambridge was sold in 1998 to the Marquee Group in New York, which was owned by SFX. Over time, Mascatello and his partners eventually were given the opportunity to buy back the company, and they did. “Three years ago, we all could see how the world was changing, a big expansion in the international golf market,” he said. “I was approached by Arn Tellem, an old friend and colleague at SFX. He was at Wasserman. The game was getting bigger and we needed a complementary agency that had international firepower. Wasserman was a good fit. We are now Wasserman Golf. They’re one of the market leaders in baseball, basketball, European soccer and dominant in action sports like motorcross, X Games. They only have one football player—Andrew Luck. Not bad.” It was not bad in the beginning for Mascatello after learning about a longhitting player who grew up in Locust
Grove, Va., before moving to Arkansas with his family. That would be John Daly, who became a two-time major champion as well as one of the game’s more colorful and controversial players. “The first time we saw John hit a shot was his drive at the 16th hole at The Players Championship, a reachable par 5. After he hit the ball off the tee, I said to Bud ‘this is like nothing we have ever seen before’ and I told him I thought this will probably be the biggest draw we ever represent.” And what was Daly like back then? “He had a good idea of what he wanted,” he said. “Bud and I knew this level of length off the tee was going to be very different. We found some early exhibitions for him. I think the first deal we did was for $2,000 in upstate New York. He was as excited about that as any of the deals we’ve done since.” Daly remains on the Wasserman client list, with Martin managing his career. “He’s still a very popular player,” Mascatello said. “When John is healthy, he can still play at the highest level. But he’s had a lot of injuries and he doesn’t
have any status in this country. It’s hard to make a set schedule for him, and that makes it hard for him to prepare.” And all the controversy over the years? “One of the real signatures of our company has always been that we simply care more than anyone else,” Mascatello said. “You can give guidance and counsel, but he’s also got to be willing to do the things you need to do. Most things in his life, he was hurting himself, not anyone else. He’s done so many good things over the years that people don’t even know about, the millions he’s given to charity, the number of lives he’s touched. That’s something people should also remember about John. And no one could have been a better friend to him than our team.” Mascatello plays golf to a single-digit handicap at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club and also is a fine tennis player. “The problem is when you don’t play enough golf, it’s hard to change (the handicap),” he said. “But I love the game, and I really love what I’m doing. Every single day is enjoyable, and to me, that’s what it’s all about. n