Longboat Key resident aces his game

On June 3, at the Resort at Longboat Key Club, Matt Zito shot a hole-in-one. A week later, on June 10, he repeated the feat. 

The odds for an average player making an ace: 12,000-to-1, according to a Golf Digest study.

Zito has been playing golf for the last 62 years, but shooting two holes-in-one in a week wasn’t something he expected. 

This brings Zito’s total to six holes-in-one throughout his golf career. He shot one last December, but he doesn’t credit it all to talent.

“I believe that holes-in-one are 50% skill and 50% luck,” he said. “After you hit the ball, luck takes over.”  

Zito never competed in golf growing up. His relationship with the game started when he became a caddy as a teen and taught himself how to play. 

His history with the sport makes his recent accomplishment, a rarity for any athlete playing the game, a surprising one. 

“I was elated,” he said. “It was beyond my imagination that I would have done that.” 

Zito and his wife, Carole, became part-time residents of Longboat Key in 1986 and full-time residents in 1989 and have golfed at the Longboat Key Club ever since. Until last year, the couple spent four months out of the year in Durango, Colo. 

“Matt’s an active golf member who plays a lot, supports the club a great deal, plays events with his wife,” Key Club Director of Golf Terry O’Hara said. “He’s 80 years old, but he doesn’t look 80.”

Before his time at the Key Club, Zito golfed at two other locations: his hometown club, Twin Brooks Country Club, in New Jersey, and The Glacier Club, in Colorado, where he scored two holes-in-one. 

“I just enjoy athletics in general,” Zito said. “I was into it my whole life, and I think it’s just enjoyable being in fresh air with good friends. So, it’s just very enjoyable to me to compete and to enjoy friendships with so many good people that we associate with here at the Longboat Key Club.”

Zito didn’t start following golf until the ’80s. He attended some PGA tours in New Jersey, but he said golf wasn’t on television growing up. 

Zito’s passion for the game has become a family affair. His wife began playing when the couple joined the club in New Jersey, and he used it as a bonding experience with his children. 

“I did teach them, especially Glen,” he said. “He and I played golf almost every Sunday from the time he was 7.”

He taught his two other children the sport. His other son, Jeff, was a high school golfer, and his daughter, Karen, enjoys playing occasionally. Zito said he and his wife have played at more than 100 courses throughout the country. 

“It’s a sport you can play for the rest of your life, and you can compete because of the handicap system with anybody,” Zito said. “When you get old … it becomes a good sport.”