Sham Illustrated's Where Are They Now?
Frank Malloy—The Cart Guy
By Laura Lindquist
Senior Features Writer, Sham Illustrated
There was a time when Frank Malloy thought golf was going to take him somewhere.
It did.
Today, Malloy manages the cart maintenance shop at Montague Municipal Golf Club.
That's where I found him, standing at a workbench wiring a solenoid for one of a half dozen damaged carts in need of repair.
“We had a slow weekend,” he said dryly. “Three rollovers and only one in the pond.”
Most people around here simply know Frank as “the cart guy.” What they don't know is that Malloy spent 15 years on the GSTPA Tour, chasing the Grand Sham. But that wasn't the way he planned it.
Malloy had once imagined a fairly conventional life. He figured he'd go to school, get a job, settle down with a nice girl and have a couple of kids. Instead, he dedicated most of his time to developing a ventriloquist routine, but he eventually gave that up for golf.
“I made the cut in the Shitish Open in my first tournament,” Malloy said. “I was hooked.”
Before he was through, Malloy would play in 47 GSTPA Tour events, make 25 cuts and finish 37th on the all-time money list.
In 2007, he picked up the only win of his career, capturing the Fore!Skins Game at Timberline Hollow.
Then came the 2009 Nasters.
Malloy had a three-shot lead on the field coming onto the final three holes at Westwood, then triple-bogeyed each of them to finish out of the top ten. It would turn out to be the sixth-largest final-round collapse in GSTPA Tour history.
“The good news is nobody remembers the sixth-worst collapse in Tour history,” Malloy said. “The bad news is nobody remembers I won the Fore!Skins either.”
Still, Malloy kept coming back.
There was always another tournament to prepare for and another reason to believe the next one might be different.
Until there wasn't.
In 2011, Malloy blew out his knee during a mixed-couples cornhole competition and his pursuit of the Grand Sham was over.
By then, he'd landed a city job at Montague Municipal. He was a good mechanic, kept his nose clean and steadily worked his way up to cart maintenance manager.
I asked him about the putter mounted in a glass display case on the wall behind his workbench.
“That's the putter I used when I won the Fore!Skins title,” he said. "When I look back, it was probably one of the best days of my life.”
Before I left, Malloy got a call from the field. Another cart had been driven into a pond.
He set down his tools, shook my hand and the cart guy headed out to get it.
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Internal Notice:
- New Pace-of-Play Initiative Showing Early Results
These materials reflect field notes, behavioral observations, and informal conclusions derived from prolonged exposure to golfers and golf culture. Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the GSTPA, the GSTPA Tour, or Sham Golf Media LLC.
Grand Sham Tournament Players Association
Officially unrecognized since 1987.
The Grand Sham Tournament Players Association (GSTPA) is an unaccredited organization. Content published on this site is satirical and intended as commentary on golf, its structures, and the lived experience of those who continue to play it.
The GSTPA does not evaluate performance. It records outcomes.