The world knows him as the ‘marker’ at the Masters. Before that, Michael McDermott was a standout golfer at St. Joe’s
When an odd number of golfers made the cut, McDermott was called into action. His playing partner, Tom Kim, called him a "complete baller," which rang true to his former teammate.
When Tom Kim hit the greens of Augusta National Golf Club during the Masters on April 12, most people didn’t know who the golfer with him was. But Terry Scollin did. It was his teammate from college, the best man at his wedding, and the godfather to his son, Ian. It was his friend Michael McDermott.
McDermott, a St. Joseph’s graduate and CEO of Wayne-based Kathmere Capital Management, is an Augusta National member. With the odd number of golfers making the cut, McDermott served as a noncompeting marker. It was his second time in the position after doing so in 2023.
But before he was a participant in one of golf’s greatest traditions, McDermott was a student-athlete at St. Joe’s.
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Scollin and McDermott played golf together at St. Joe’s from 1993 to 1997. The two met on the first day of practice in the fall of ’93 when Cobbs Creek was their course.
Scollin recalled McDermott showing up on that first day with his persimmon wood driver, while everyone else was using Callaway Big Berthas.
Still, McDermott was hitting the ball 50 yards past everyone else, Scollin said.
“We all knew he was pretty special when he got there,” said Scollin, now the men’s golf coach at St. Joe’s. “You can tell he was better than everybody else.”
The Havertown native played in every tournament across his four years with the Hawks, according to his teammate. After that, McDermott also had a successful amateur run. He was named the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Player of the Year five times and won the Crump Cup, the prestigious mid-amateur golf tournament, in 2012 and 2017. He was inducted into the St. Joseph’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010.
With McDermott’s knack for “pleasant sarcasm” and dry humor, Scollin said everyone would instantly love him. He noticed the same was still true when he heard Kim talking about McDermott, calling him a “complete baller,” in his post-tournament press conference. The club does not make McDermott available to the media.
“That just speaks volumes,” Scollin said. “He’s just always been that way, just very receptive, easy to talk to, great teammate.”
One McDermott story from their time as teammates stood out to Scollin. St. Joe’s was playing at the James Madison Invitational. The Hawks weren’t playing as well as they hoped. Still, McDermott was under par. That’s when then-coach Bob Lynch went up to McDermott and told him he had to start playing even better for the team’s sake. Of course, McDermott was up for the challenge.
“He then played even better than he was playing to pick up some of the slack for the rest of us that were struggling,” Scollin said. “It’s funny, you can’t just golf. It’s not something that you can just, ‘OK, I’m going to start making birdies.’ It’s just hard to do that, but Michael was a guy that Lynch knew he could tell to do that.”
His former coach described McDermott as a “laid-back guy.” Lynch said McDermott always let his golf do his talking.
“He’s a big kid and a big presence, and guys looked up to him for sure,” said Lynch, who retired in 2024 after 35 years. “He carried his weight.”
But McDermott isn’t just good at golf.
Scollin, from Amherst, N.H., stayed with McDermott a lot during their four years at St. Joe’s. McDermott’s parents had a pool table and a pingpong table in the basement. McDermott usually won in both. He typically beat Scollin in basketball, too.
“He was just always annoying in a funny way. He was always just a little bit better,” Scollin said.
Scollin said he and McDermott still talk, if not daily, then at least once a week.
And when McDermott got the envelope inviting him to be a member at Augusta eight years ago, he called Scollin right away to tell him.
Moments like that mean the most to McDermott: being able to share his experiences with Scollin or his two younger brothers, the Hawks coach said.
“He gets more satisfaction, honestly, at taking us to Augusta than actually being there,” Scollin said.
McDermott doesn’t regularly volunteer his stories about the Hall of Fame football players or the executives he has played with. Scollin said he’s too humble for that. Those stories usually have to be prodded out of him. But it’s the joy McDermott gets from sharing those stories with those closest to him when they ask, Scollin said, that makes the moments more special for McDermott.
“He has so much more fun sharing where he gets to go and where he gets to play at Augusta and everything else with those that are close around him,” Scollin said. “That’s the kind of stuff that he really loves doing, so he gets a lot of joy from that.”