Celebrity sightings at the SandersFit Performance Center in Dallas are par for the course. On any given day, Dallas Cowboys stars Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliott and Micah Parsons, and Baltimore Ravens running back Derrick Henry, might make a cameo. Metroplex natives Julius Randle of the NBA’s New York Knicks and Jordan Lawlar, the sixth overall pick of the 2021 Major League Baseball Draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks, are also regulars.

But these superstars aren’t the only recognizable faces at the facility. Recently, another gym regular has received plenty of media facetime, only this individual isn’t a client. Since 2015, Bobby Massa has trained a number of golfers – professional and amateur – to enhance flexibility and increase their speed to add more distance.

It’s something the Dallas-area native – he attended Irving High School and later the University of Texas-Arlington – has been passionate about since his early teenage years. While Massa has played the game for two decades, he formally announced himself to the golf world last month at Hazeltine National Golf Club, in Chaska, Minn., by making a run to the quarterfinals of the 124th U.S. Amateur Championship before bowing out to eventual champion Jose Luis Ballester, 3 and 1.

For the 36-year-old father of a 15-month-old daughter (Palmer) – and a son due in February – it was a rare achievement by a mid-amateur. Massa came within a whisker of being the first member of the 25-and-older set to reach the U.S. Amateur semis in 19 years. Since John Harris’ title in 1993, only 15 mid-amateurs (Stewart Hagestad and George “Buddy” Marucci have done it twice) have advanced to the last eight of America’s oldest amateur competition.

Displaying the power of the more-heralded juniors and collegians in the field, Massa managed to eliminate Duke University standout Luke Sample, incoming Stanford University star Ratchanon Tk Chantanuwat and 2023 Canadian Amateur champion/Michigan State standout Ashton McCulloch, holing a 25-foot birdie putt on the 23rd hole to reach the quarters.

Despite being 15 to 18 years older than his foes, Massa routinely impressed with 300-yard-plus drives, much of which he’s obtained through his vigorous workout regimen and the philosophies he preaches to his 40-50 weekly clients.

That talent will again be on display at Kinloch Golf Club and stroke-play co-host Independence Golf Club in suburban Richmond, Va., when Massa competes in his third U.S. Mid-Amateur. A year ago, at Sleepy Hollow Country Club, in Scarborough, N.Y., he also advanced to the quarterfinals before dropping a 2-and-1 decision to Ole Miss economics professor Brett Patterson.

“Definitely a few more people have stopped by [the gym],” said Massa of his newfound notoriety. “Nothing uncontrollable…After getting back home, it’s back to dad life and working, so [my life] hasn’t changed much for me.”

Given his job, and family life, which includes wife Kalloway (she doesn’t play golf despite having a first name that closely resembles a popular equipment company), Massa has to carefully plan his practice time. That usually centers on a $9 medium bucket of balls off artificial-turf mats at the public Tenison Park Golf Course once a week that includes a little chipping and putting on greens that run around 7-8 feet on the Stimpmeter. He mixes in a few rounds of golf with clients at some of the area’s finest courses and competes in state events and USGA qualifiers – he lost a playoff at the 2022 Texas Amateur and qualified for the last two U.S. Amateurs. Last year, he Monday qualified for his second PGA Tour’s AT&T Byron Nelson a decade after first achieving the feat as a professional.

For a guy who plays so infrequently, the talent is unmistakable. Massa has been known to reach clubhead and ball speeds of 130 mph and 190 mph, respectively. For those at home, that’s tour-level metrics. His problem has been producing consistent results that translate into high finishes.

It was why his professional career never took flight. During his time at Texas-Arlington, he was good enough to compete with the best in the collegiate game. But when he turned professional, his game, particularly the flight of his shots, went severely off the rails. There were days in tournaments where Massa’s shots were so offline that he ran the threat of running out of golf balls before the round ended.

He did produce a couple of mini-tour victories, but by 2015, his game had become unsustainable in terms of making enough money to support being a full-time pro.

“I couldn’t hit a 7-iron within 100 yards of each other in competition,” said Massa. “I went through the swing yips for almost seven years. It wasn’t because I had totally stopped playing golf. I’d go to the driving range and hit balls. I love the game. Honestly, when I stopped playing professionally, my whole goal was just to be able to play golf again, not necessarily in competition. I wanted to be able to go out with my friends…and not be embarrassed.

“I was seeing a number of different teachers. I was going down the whole rabbit hole of learning about the golf swing and where the club was. I ended up diagnosing myself. I created a lot of mental problems. It started bad technically and then it got bad mentally.”

Massa became such a nervous wreck on the golf course that he would tell playing partners before teeing off to not be alarmed if his tee shots went 150 yards astray. It got to the point where he wouldn’t play with strangers.

Eventually, Massa, who regained his amateur status in 2019, started to figure things out to eliminate the high right push by reducing the angle of his forearm rotation. His brain “started to calm down” and he began producing results that he once had in college. He turned his overwhelming power into a positive and qualified for his first U.S. Mid-Amateur in 2022. He made it back in 2023 and added the U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills, where he just missed the match-play cut.

The game started to become enjoyable again.

Making the “bomb” to defeat McCulloch, a 2024 U.S. Open qualifier, with a huge crowd surrounding the 18th green (fifth extra hole) and a television audience watching on Golf Channel was certainly a career highlight.

“You never really know how you are going to handle yourself with people and cameras,” said Massa. “You try to enjoy the moment. It happened to work out in my favor that time. Obviously, I will never forget that. I have footage of it. It was a phenomenal moment for me.”

Mid-Amateurs to Reach U.S. Amateur Quarterfinals Since 1993

*-Lost in semifinals to Dillon Dougherty
**-Lost in semifinals to Jeff Quinney
***-Lost in championship match to Hank Kuehn
****-Lost in championship match to Tiger Woods
*****-Lost in semifinals to Tiger Woods

As a youth, Massa would have never dreamed of such a moment on the golf course. His first love was basketball, but as a 4-foot-11, 95-pound high school freshman, reality took over. He also enjoyed playing baseball, and while size isn’t an important factor to success on the diamond, Massa believed his future wasn’t there either. His parents made him pick a sport in high school and since his older brother, Cody, was playing competitive golf, Bobby went that route. Cody, who now resides in Scottsdale, Ariz., still plays competitively and the two played their U.S. Amateur Four-Ball qualifier at Wigwam Golf, in Litchfield Park, Ariz., on Sept. 16, but failed to advance to the championship proper.

Out of necessity, Massa also discovered the weight room. By the end of his sophomore year, he was only 5-2 and 105 pounds. That was just prior to a growth spurt in which Massa would eventually reach 6 feet, 1 inch as a college sophomore.

Incessant workouts certainly helped pack pounds of muscle to his frame, even if he had little knowledge for proper physical fitness. Massa constantly asked questions, to the point where, the time he was a college senior, he was helping to train fellow teammates.

Because of that passion, Massa wasted no time becoming a personal trainer after leaving pro golf in 2015. For many years, the idea of golfers having a workout regimen was virtually non-existent. Then Tiger Woods came along and made it “cool” to hit the weight room.

“One hundred percent, Tiger changed the game for everybody,” said Massa. “Everyone saw the benefits of it, and it just took off.”

At the outset, Massa started with people he knew – fellow professionals and friends – by going to apartment gyms. Instead of a marketing campaign, he chose word of mouth to develop a client list. USGA president Fred Perpall became a client after an ex-UTA teammate, Wes Worster, recommended him. Worster works at Trinity Forest, Perpall’s home club, and he was seeking a trainer.

In 2015, he randomly found Melvin Sanders, a former Oklahoma State basketball standout who had played professionally with the San Antonio Spurs and overseas. Sanders was working out of a space associated with two apartments when Massa stopped by to see a client. Within a week, Massa was regularly training individuals in the gym and quickly became part of Sanders’ growing list of professional trainers. In 2017, he opened a gym in the basement of that same building and the business has continued to blossom ever since.

“We’ve had some of the best athletes in the world basically since we opened,” said Massa, who doesn’t have any current PGA Tour stars, mainly because he doesn’t want to go on the road for 15-20 weeks a year.

The recent success of two-time U.S. Open champion/2015 U.S. Amateur champion Bryson DeChambeau, a transplanted Californian who stayed in the Metroplex after playing at Southern Methodist University, has also helped Massa grow his client list. His social media videos showed how intensive training can lead to added speed and distance.

Massa’s goal with every client is to add 4 mph, which can translate to an extra 7 yards with a 7-iron and 12 additional yards off the tee with the driver. But Massa cautions anyone trying to go above 185 mph in ball speed as it can lead to control problems. Even DeChambeau has dialed back some of his speed to gain better control of his shots.

“My realistic goal is if I can give you 4 mph [extra speed], you’re hitting a 9-iron where you would have been hitting a 7-iron on par-4s,” said Massa. “I spend a lot more time with people ages 30 to 70, not necessarily guys who are trying to play for a living. A lot of people who have had speed in the past and have lost it, I want to get that back. Usually, it’s a really fast transition. Within a month of working out once or twice a week for a month or two, people are gaining 3-4 mph.”

That includes Massa, who has quickly become one of the top mid-amateurs in the country, despite his No. 743 spot in the World Amateur Golf Ranking®/WAGR®. That number was 2,969 during his U.S. Amateur run. A late three-putt on No. 14 and a poor drive at the dogleg-right 16th eventually led to the 3-and-1 loss to Ballester, a defeat that left a sour taste. Although the heavy underdog to the Arizona State All-American from Spain, Massa never felt overmatched.

Don’t expect the confidence to wane at Kinloch, even though he’s much more of a known commodity than he was a month ago.

“I don’t think it will be any different from my perspective,” said Massa. “I’ll be doing the same thing ever since I started playing golf. I’ll play my practice rounds, hit balls and go. I might get a few more congratulations [for my U.S. Amateur run], but my motivation won’t change. I’ll be happy to be there. I’ll be playing on a great golf course. It can’t be a bad time. I love the competition aspect of these things.”

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.