Nick Maccario (Salem News)

After a month stretch of coming up on the short end, mid-am Nick Maccario comes through at the 56th Hornblower Amateur.

The golf gods swayed against Maccario at the Massachusetts Amateur, the New England Amateur, and the Francis Ouimet Memorial before giving him the nod this week.

“Everybody has their week,” Maccario told AmateurGolf.com. “You just have to wait until it’s yours.”

Happy he played well over the course of July, Maccario could not ignore the mental toll his close calls took on him.

“You need luck to win a golf tournament or at least a couple bounces,” Maccario said.“Not to say that you earn them or anything but there’s definitely a couple of times where I felt that my opponents got good breaks and I’d hit a couple of bad shots, so it’s a little bit of that luck factor.”

He found that luck on Tuesday at Plymouth Country Club. Heading into the second round of the 36-hole tournament, Maccario was six shots off the lead after posting an even-par 69. Battling harsh winds that were coming off the front edge of Hurricane Isaias, Maccario was 3-under on the day and was thinking he needed a par to at least tie round one leader Chris Francouer who was, at the time, 3-over on the day.

“I felt pretty calm,” said Maccario. “The last shot I hit into 18 was a 90-yard shot, I couldn’t go at the pin I was coming out of the rough and it was downwind 30 miles per hour. I aimed just on the front edge and I just carried the bunker by a foot, it bounced up and got to the green about 20-feet [from the hole]. I was like ‘that’s the bounce I needed’... it was a good bounce that went my way.”

Jotting down a par to close things out, Maccario finally got the proverbial camel off his back. Francouer finished his round at 4-over (2-under for the tournament), finishing in a tie for second with Max Ferrari.

With the win, Maccario is looking forward to taking some much needed time off from competitive golf. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more dominant stretch of golf this summer than the one Maccario put together.

View results for Hornblower Memorial Invitational