TEACHABLE MOMENT: Walter Gumbinger gets ready to hit a tee shot this July at the Springdale Golf Club as Jason Barry looks on. Gumbinger enjoyed a superb season this spring for the Princeton High boys’ golf team, winning the Colonial Valley Conference (CVC) Open Championship and getting named as the CVC Golfer of the Year. Springdale Director of Instruction Barry, a former PHS golf star himself, has worked with Gumbinger over the last two years, helping him emerge as a star. (Photo by Bill Alden)
By Bill Alden
Even when he was starring for the Princeton High boys’ golf team 20 years ago, Jason Barry sensed that his future in the game would center on teaching.
“I would try to help some of my teammates just by giving them advice,” said Barry, a 2006 PHS alum who was a member of the 2005-08 Tiger boys’ golf team that got inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018. “I was always fascinated by player development. I really enjoyed working with juniors, even in high school. Basically, right after high school I got the job working at the Mercer County Golf Academy at Mercer Oaks.”
Barry went on to coach the WW/P-North boys’ golf team for a year before going on to guide the Rider University men’s program for 11 years from 2013-24. Barry applied his teaching background in leading the Broncs to new heights, helping the program lower its stroke average by 30 shots per round and win its first Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) championship in 2022.
A big part of the success we had at Rider was player development,” said Barry. “We recruited players who the other coaches didn’t want or overlooked. A lot of that is that I saw potential in swing videos or local events where programs that were ranked a little higher would be more interested in national results. I was more interested in potential. We basically made our success out of getting kids and making them better.”
In 2019, Barry became the director of instruction at the Springdale Golf Club and has made a lot of golfers there better over the last six years.
“I am responsible for a lot of the teaching; we do group clinics, and we do a lot of junior camps and programs,” said Barry. “I also helped establish a junior elite membership for competitive golfers who need a membership at a club. I ran a junior tournament in the spring here. It is basically all things teaching and coaching. I have taught hundreds of people over the years. Springdale is amazing. Anthony Pagliari, the general manager, does a great gob. Andrew Gordon is the head pro, and he does a great job. Donovan Maguigan is the superintendent and does an amazing job doing that. The membership is great.”
One of the highlights of Barry’s job is working with players from his alma mater.
“I coach a lot of the PHS team. Out of the boys’ starting lineup, I worked with four out of five of them,” said Barry. “I think I worked with three out of the five girls. Both of the teams had great years and both of their coaches, Pat Noone (boys) and Jess Monzo (girls), do a great job with the programs too. Some of the players were in our junior program years ago and they went out for the team this year.”
One of Barry’s star pupils, Walter Gumbinger, emerged as a star for PHS, winning the winning the Colonial Valley Conference (CVC) tournament this May and getting named as the CVC Golfer of the Year this spring and committing to play at the next level for Dickinson College.
“I worked with Walter for two years, he came to me going into his junior year,” said Barry. “He had a pretty good golf swing but was just seriously getting into playing competitive golf. We did a lot of work on course management and putting and just how to go about practicing. We worked on a new swing, and he had done a great job there. It was really getting more serious about competing and how to go about practicing and preparing for some of these events. We do a lot of off-season work.”
That work has clearly paid dividends. “He has gotten so much better in the last two years, a lot of it is the way he has structured his practice and being more serious about being a competitive golfer,” added Barry. “Another thing is just tournament reps. He has traveled to Florida and played on a bunch of tours. The more that you are seriously working on your game and seriously competing, sometimes you get beat up but you learn from it. He has gotten more reps doing it and, with that, you come back to the drawing board and tune up what needs work.”
Gumbinger, for his part, acknowledges that he is a late bloomer in the game.
“I used to play soccer and then I stopped when COVID started,” said Gumbinger. “Then I picked up really seriously in golf in 2021. As soon as I graduated eighth grade, I knew our high school had a golf team, so I was, I want to make the team. I really started practicing and putting in hours. I made it my freshman year and then played a few matches.”
After breaking into the PHS starting lineup as a sophomore, Gumbinger started playing in outside tournaments and took some lumps along the way.
“I really didn’t play great in them, I put together a few good rounds,” said Gumbinger. “I would play a tournament and then I would learn a lesson from it and go to the next one and implement those things. Over the summer, I continuously got better. In the winter, we flew down to Florida a few times for some tournaments and college recruitment.”
In his junior year, Gumbinger turned to Barry after meeting him through an after-school program at Springdale.
“I had a decent swing at the time, I was getting more into it,” said Gumbinger. “It was like, ‘OK, I really want to get better at golf.’ I met Jason and then winter of junior year, I did lessons at his Rider facility once every two or three weeks, which was really good. I felt like every time I came home from it I was really learning stuff.”
Building on that work, Gumbinger fine-tuned his game and mental approach to competition.
“Mentality-wise, we didn’t get into the mental side of it and playing an actual golf course and how to hit certain shots until the spring of my junior year,” said Gumbinger. “In the winter, it was really just trying to get down technique. We were fixing the bad habits I had created, trying to create new good habits. It takes a long time — we really worked hard on that.”
Utilizing those good habits, Gumbinger rolled to the first place in the CVC Open Championship this May at the Mercer Oaks Golf Course (West), carding a 3-under 69 to win by six strokes.
“It felt like all of the hard work I put in paid off,” said Gumbinger, reflecting on the triumph. “I felt like the year before I got snubbed from the CVC first team, I got put on the second team. I went into the season with a chip on my shoulder a little bit. I was really proud of myself and then when I found out I was the CVC Player of the Year. I took a moment to myself and thought that I achieved the goals that I wanted to. If I have a goal, I really want to get there.”
In assessing his progress over the last two years, Gumbinger points to gaining tournament experience as a key factor.
“I feel like I have always had a good athletic swing, and I could tell you where the ball was going,” said Gumbinger, who has also worked with a sports psychologist to help him keep composed in the heat of competition. “It was just more consistency, tournament reps and
getting used to shooting lower scores. It is hard when you shoot a few under and you still have a few holes left. You feel like, ‘OK am I going to keep doing this or am I going to blow up.’ Then there were a few rounds where I put it together and I thought this is how golf is supposed to be.”
This summer, Gumbinger has played in some big-time tournaments, making the quarterfinal round of the 104th W.Y. Dear Junior Championship at Essex Fells Country Club in early July and then competing in the 108th Met Junior Championship in Southhampton (N.Y.) Golf Club later in the month where he missed the cut for match play.
As Gumbinger looks forward to starting his Dickinson career this fall, he is determined to make an impact from the start.
“I really want to play, I want to be in the lineup,” said Gumbinger. “The coach gives us a good chance at the start of the year. We have a 36-hole qualifier as soon as we get there. Our first event of the year is our home event so everybody on the team gets to play. So, if I don’t do well in the qualifying at least I have a back-up in an actual tournament. We have a lot of tournaments so I can play a lot in the fall. In the winter, I can come back and work with Jason. I am really excited. I really just want to play and have fun with golf.”
Barry, for his part, is excited about his star pupil’s prospects at the next level.
“The sky is the limit for Walter,” said Barry. “If he can make this much progress in the time I have known him, you can just imagine what would happen in the next couple of years.”