{"id":6979,"date":"2014-06-11T17:45:39","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T21:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=6979"},"modified":"2014-06-25T22:39:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T02:39:59","slug":"casullo-takes-a-swing-at-south-carolina-accepting-prestigious-golf-scholarship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/casullo-takes-a-swing-at-south-carolina-accepting-prestigious-golf-scholarship\/","title":{"rendered":"Casullo takes a swing at South Carolina, accepting prestigious golf scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marc Casullo knew he loved golf right from the first time his dad entered him into a tournament at the age of eight.<\/p>\n

After that win, now aged 17, and an upcoming graduate at Villanova College in King City, Casullo is taking his game to the United States on a scholarship at Francis Marion College in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

He first visited the school in January and things fell into place from there. He committed to them in February, officially signing his commitment in April to mark another achievement in his young career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt awesome because there were a lot of schools I was looking at, but they were more in the northern area,\u201d he said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t really work out for me and then once I heard about this school and all the good stuff about it, I made my decision. Being able to be recognized at that level was pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

He admitted that the harsh winter up here in Canada may have influenced his decision just a bit, with the thought of being able to practice outside on the beautiful golf courses in South Carolina year-round drawing him in. <\/p>\n

However, he was quick to point out that there were many other obvious factors that led to making his final decision to go there for golf and to study business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weather being nicer was another thing, but having the opportunity to become a better player and seeing a lot more playing time were other factors,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I met the coach, he really drew me in. You can tell he\u2019s a motivator who really pushes the players on the team and puts us in very competitive tournaments to show how well we stack up against other teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he began at Villanova four years ago, his Grade 9 year ended without much success on the course. Grade 10, however, ended on a positive note, which then snowballed into a very successful year in Grade 11 when he placed sixth overall at OFSAA.<\/p>\n

He said 2013 was definitely a turning point for his career. After his strong showing at OFSAA, he went to the US juniors in California and then played in the Canadian Amateur in Victoria, the biggest amateur tournament in the country, where he was the youngest player.<\/p>\n

Then this year, he closed out his time at Villanova with a CISAA individual title at the end of May.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat felt great because I missed OFSAA this year for the first time in three years and I was telling everyone that this was my last chance to win the CISAA title, so I put my mind into that,\u201d he said. \u201cTo win it was pretty awesome. To close out my career like that at Villanova was just the cherry on the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as playing with the team at Villanova, Casullo is also a member at Summit Golf and Country Club, where he is coached by Canadian pro golfer, Ian Leggatt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say all my successes came after working with him, but he\u2019s someone that\u2019s just so professional and he says it how it is,\u201d he said. \u201cHe helped me get into a different mindset with the game. He has been a pretty big part of my success.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about his future goals and aspirations, Casullo spoke of taking his golf game pro, but said it\u2019s important to be realistic and not get too carried away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy for anyone to say they want to move on to the PGA tour, but that\u2019s going to be a hard thing to do,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s mainly about going through each process and now that I\u2019m going to College, I\u2019ve just got to compete there, do as well as I can and see where I go next. I\u2019m just going to keep striving to do as well as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

If he doesn\u2019t make it pro, the soft-spoken Aurora resident said he loves teaching the game to kids and will always look at getting into the teaching\/instruction side of things.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll soon be heading down to South Carolina for his new adventure, which he said can be traced back to that first tournament he won nine years ago.
\n\u201cIt just kept growing from there,\u201d he said. \u201cI have found that it\u2019s a tough sport mentally, but it always keeps me coming back for more.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marc Casullo knew he loved golf right from the first time his dad entered him into a tournament at the age of eight.<\/p>\n

After that win, now aged 17, and an upcoming graduate at Villanova College in King City…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1Oz","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-31 12:21:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/2014-06-11-16.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}