By Tim O’Connor
A well-adjusted person is one who can play golf as if it were a game.
From a coaster on the author’s desk
Occasionally, an avid golfer will get into a conversation about golf with someone who doesn’t play golf.
Sometimes, the non-golfer will ask how anyone could possibly enjoy whacking a ball, walking to it, hitting it again, and doing this over and over. (Put that way …)
Most golfers will respond with comments such as: they enjoy the competition, being outside in nature, getting exercise, trying to lower their scores, escaping work, and hanging out with friends.
Interestingly, most golfers rarely say they play golf to have fun.
That’s unless you play with Mazen Kassis, a 63-year-old member of GreyHawk Golf Club in Ottawa. Mazen has fun. During a round of golf, he appears mainly committed to entertaining himself and his companions, trying wild shots, and walking far enough so he can eat ice cream guilt-free.
He plays every day, but never carries a scorecard, doesn’t play in Club events such as the Club Championship, and, historically, doesn’t post scores to establish an index.
About 45 minutes into a recent conversation with Mazen about playing golf, he hadn’t mentioned anything about the quality of his game or his scores until asked. Turns out his average score is around 76. As Steve Martin used to say, “this guy’s good!”
But that’s not what he focuses on.
“It’s never been my thing. I never cared. I can’t find a bigger competitor than myself,” says the father of three. He wonders whether competing and focusing on his scores “might get in the way of how I enjoy the game.”
As you can see on his hundreds of Instagram and Facebook posts, Mazen hurtles around the course with frenetic energy, trying all kinds of shots just for the hell of it.
Even when he’s hovering around par during a round, he’ll play a par-three—regardless of its length—with a driver, including putting with his driver. When he faces a regular chip, he’ll sometimes hit the highest flop shot he can.
His son Jayden—also a GreyHawk Member—says his father is always trying risky shots, such as hitting driver off the fairway and flying three-woods over water. “Dad’s attitude is ‘You won’t remember a lay-up, but you’ll remember the crazy shot.’ That mentality keeps the sport fun.”
When he practices bunker or chip shots, he’ll often put his phone in the cup and record himself hitting to the hole. He loves trick shots; he can hit a high bunker shot and then a low shot—and both balls will arrive at the hole simultaneously.
“He doesn’t do things the common way,” his son Jordan says: “He wants to have fun.”
Mazen says: “I’m the strangest of golfers. I take the game seriously, but I don’t beat myself up over anything to do with the game. I think I can make every conceivable shot and enjoy it when I attempt a ridiculous shot.”
Mazen’s priority appears pretty basic: to enjoy life. This requires being constantly moving, staying healthy in body and mind (he reads two to three non-fiction books a week), creating and sharing his Lebanese cooking, and being with people.
“I cook for my family,” he said. “I don’t cook for myself.” He eats one meal a day. When he’s occasionally alone at home, that one meal will consist of two pieces of bread and cheese, or a bowl of his beloved ice cream.
In the recent past, he’s played 36 holes, run 10 kilometres, and cooked something completely new from scratch—all in one day. The health app on his phone usually shows he’s active every day for 13 of 13 hours. He ran his first half marathon at age 51 in 1:47 hours with four weeks of preparation. Except for when he drives to the golf course, he stands or walks most of the day.
Mazen doesn’t boast. He tells you these things without seeking acknowledgment. It’s data. In conversation, he’s always focused on the doing, never on the result.
Yes, he’s been “successful” in his life, but he marvels at what his parents went through, especially his mother who was married at 13, acted as a “surrogate mother” for three of her siblings, and then had 10 children of her own in Marjayoun, Lebanon.
When Mazen was seven, his mother Carolina—who had “very little education and absolutely no knowledge of the world”—flew to Montreal with seven children in 1968. The eldest was 12. His father Nawaf and two older brothers came to Canada two months earlier. His sister joined them later.
A few years ago, when there was talk about immigrants and the countries they come from, Mazen wrote a post about his parent’s migration, saying, “I do not have the courage it takes to be an immigrant.”
His entire family worked in the pizza business. Mazen owned his first pizza shop when he was in high school. Today, Mazen is president of Milano Pizza, which has 40 locations in the Ottawa area.
Between 1979 and 2008, Mazen rarely took a day off and worked 100 hours a week without realizing it. He did every job, including cleaning bathrooms and “dirty jobs.”
In 2008, after several visits to Emergency and an ambulance ride, he was diagnosed with benign positional vertigo. “It spooked me and that’s why I made the changes in my life,” he said.
He began removing himself from the daily operations of Milano’s and started to play more golf.
He also owns a company that makes gluten-free and keto pizza dough, he co-developed PopCurds Breaded Cheese Curds, and he’s a major investor in Dunrobin Distilleries, even though he doesn’t drink alcohol.
“Nothing drives me. I’m successful by chance,” he said. “I got into the distillery business not for how much money I’d make. I believe they make Canada’s finest whiskey. I thought that was cool.”
His son Jayden says: “I have a hard time getting my head around my father’s life, that he was born in a family of 10 kids with no money and little opportunity to get out of Lebanon— and look at him now. With everything he’s been through, I think the only way for him is to enjoy his life, including golf.”
Jordan says his father modeled “mental strength. Dad was showing and telling us that you can do whatever you want. You just need motivation.”
“He’s one of a kind,” says Jonathan Hatchell, a friend and partner in Dunrobin Distilleries. “He gets his pleasure from hearing and speaking to other people. He’s very generous. Probably people won’t know what he gives back. He’s a successful businessperson and a big giver to charity, but he’d never tell you that.”
He’s also a big giver to the staff at GreyHawk, bringing them treats and his home cooking five days a week, including homemade bread and baklava, ice cream in summer, butter tarts in the fall, and, of course, pizza.
“Mazen is as inspiring as he is humble,” says Stephen Jardeleza, Director of Operations at GreyHawk. “He’s the type of guy who puts a smile on your face as soon as you see him.”
Mazen is a reminder that there’s far more to golf than the numbers that go on the scorecard. He opens us up to the possibility that there’s other options for describing a golf shot than just “good” or “bad.”
Maybe a golf shot could even be “fun.”
Tim O’Connor lives in Guelph, Ontario. He is the author of The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story, the Up & Down blog on Substack.com, and co-host of the Swing Thoughts podcast. His most recent book is the upcoming Getting Unstuck: Seven Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds.
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