Timothy J. Tomasi ’62
Timothy J. Tomasi, Port St. Lucie, FL, died November 11, 2023, the College learned recently.
A native of Burlington, VT, he earned his Saint Michael’s undergraduate degree in sociology and his master’s from the College in education before going on to complete a doctorate in education from SUNY-Buffalo, with a focus on how people learn.
“TJ” made his living as a golf pro and instructor for many years, including in Connecticut, according to press clippings in his Saint Michael’s alumni file. A 2003 feature from a Connecticut local paper noted he was Lyman Orchards Golf Club’s director of instruction in Middlefield, CT, and was a resident of Berlin, CT, then. He began that position after serving as the director of golf at Berlin’s Pistol Creek Golf Club for a year. He spent the previous six years as the director of the Player’s School at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
T.J. wrote 13 golf books, including the international best-seller Play Better Golf and the 1999 Golf Book of the Year, Laws of the Golf Swing. His best-known book likely was The 30-Second Golf Swing, which, he once said, isn’t really about how to swing the club, but more about how to focus for 30 seconds.
He was named to Golf Magazine’s Top 100 teachers list for many years running and was reputed to be the most published teaching professional in the history of the sport. He was a senior instructional editor at Golf Tips magazine where he wrote a monthly article and was a syndicated columnist for Universal Press Syndicate where he wrote a weekly “Insider Golf” article featured in newspapers and on websites nationwide.
A 1998 alumni survey in T.J.’s file states that he served as that time as chief executive officer for Anodyne Energy Corp. in Buffalo, NY, where he was living. Earlier, in 1982, he reported living in New Mexico.
He is survived by his wife, June, who told the College that, as a very private man, T.J. requested that he have no formal newspaper or funeral home website obituary – therefore, no further word was available about survivors.