On Scarpetta's plaque: He was a co-captain of the only Penn team to win the Eastern Intercollegiate Championship, in 1974. He also helped Penn win the 1972 ECAC Fall Championship and advance to the 1973 and 1974 NCAA Championships. Overall, Penn went 37-5 during his three-year varsity career. He was the first player in program history to play as an individual at NCAAs (1972), and he earned honorable mention GCAA All-America twice. He earned first-team All-Ivy three times: as the low Ivy player at the 1973 Eastern Championship, tied as low Ivy player in 1974, and tied for fifth among Ivy players in 1972.
 
By Joe Juliano
 
Ask almost anyone who plays the game and they'll tell you: "Golf is hard."
 
Still the sport never appeared hard when watching Vince Scarpetta Jr. play it, particularly in the early 1970s when he helped the Penn men develop into an elite Ivy League team. He led the Quakers to three consecutive appearances in the NCAA Championship—two with his teammates and one as an individual—and twice earned honorable mention All-America, achievements that have earned him a place in the 2022 induction class for the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame.
 
There were countless fundamental reasons for Scarpetta's success: a phenomenal short game, an outstanding putting touch, a relentless straight hitter of the golf ball, a commitment to practice that reflected the habits of a player he admired, the great Ben Hogan, who liked to say he would find his game "in the dirt."
 
The mental side of golf, however, usually gave Scarpetta the edge on the course. He was very competitive but, at the same time, very controlled. He never showed flashes of temper during play and felt it was an advantage when an opponent let his emotions get the better of him.
 
"I never saw him lose his temper," said former teammate Mark Junewicz. "You could see it in his eyes when he was not happy with himself, but I've never seen him throw a club. I've never seen him raise his voice at someone. He was intense, very intense, but he never did that. He was always well-liked by everybody.
 
"Vince is a grinder. He's one of the best putters anyone has ever seen. He has a gift for it. A lot of that is his self-confidence, and he's very self-confident. He was really a special talent."
 
John Gershey, a frequent golf partner of Scarpetta dating back to their high school days, said focus was his strong suit.
 
"To this day, Vince is very, very focused, and his ability to concentrate and block out all the noise around him is fabulous," he said.
 
Scarpetta, 69, a long-time owner of small businesses whose latest venture is in climate tech consulting, said his competitive nature was "pretty much ingrained in me" growing up in Jermyn, Pa., outside of Scranton. It continued during an excellent high school career at Scranton Prep, where he won the Pennsylvania Catholic Interscholastic Athletic Association championship as a junior.
 
"In any sport, that's what we did," he said. "You played hard. You kicked stones when you lost and you were pretty happy when you won. But in golf, more often than not, you're really competing against yourself, I think. You're wrestling with the thoughts that you don't want in your mind and trying to put in the ones that you do."
 
Another quality that led to Scarpetta's success is his love of the game, something that his father, Vince Sr., instilled in him and his younger brother, David.
 
"We'd always talk about the mental parts of the game," he said. "More than anything, I think he instilled that you have to respect everybody that you're playing with because everybody's kind of going through the same feelings and emotions in the course of a round.
 
"But he just loved the game. He loved the challenge it presented to everybody. That's pretty much what he taught me the most, was the love of the game. I'm still playing. I still get out and love it and get the same feelings I got when I was 16 years old."
 
David Scarpetta also benefitted from his father's wisdom and encouragement and reveled in his brother's success in high school.
 
"Vince has a lot of heart," he said. "Whatever he lacked in physical skills he made up with determination and heart. Of course, he had a tour-quality short game, too. There was no give-up in Vince during the course of a round, no matter what."
 
When Vince wasn't playing, he was practicing, either at the family's home course at Elkview Country Club or in a field across the street from their home. Gershey recalled that love of practicing.
 
"I hated going to the range," he said. "David and I would be playing and we'd get to the 12th hole at Elkview and the tee would be right next to the range. Vince would be there hitting balls, hitting balls, hitting balls and we'd be laughing at him. He'd also practice short putts on a little putting green next to the clubhouse, and the green would be really worn down."
 
Scarpetta's high school accomplishments attracted the attention of college coaches, but Penn and the Wharton School were his first choice all along. He entered the University as part of a stellar freshman class that included Rich Brooke, winner of the 1971 Western Junior Amateur, and Keith Griffin, 1970 Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) champion.
 
Though not permitted to play in varsity matches, the freshmen showed their mettle early when they soundly defeated the upperclassmen in a scrimmage. The team finished 9-0 against other freshman programs, and Scarpetta established himself early in his sophomore season when he tied the school record of 67 in a competition at renowned Aronimink Golf Club in suburban Philadelphia.
 
The round prompted his coach, Robert Hays—himself a member of the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame—to say, "at this stage, he is as good as anybody I've coached to date. The possibility of a spot on the tour for him is there."
 
Recalling that moment, Scarpetta called the possibility "a very unlikely reality."
 
"I went to the NCAAs a couple of years and that was the vintage time where Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, Andy North, Andy Bean and those guys were playing," he said. "There was a big gap between those guys and the rest of the players."
 
Nevertheless, that didn't stop Scarpetta and his teammates from excelling the next two years. The Quakers were ranked in the top 20 for a time in 1973 and Scarpetta won an East-West collegiate tournament in a field that included Crenshaw and Jim Simons. The team also captured the 1974 Eastern Intercollegiate Golf Association title.
 
Since Penn's home course at the time, Kimberton Golf Course, was a hike from campus, Scarpetta and Junewicz, his teammate, often would take the Frankford El to 69th Street and walk the two miles to Cobbs Creek to practice. Or they might play a five-hole loop across the street at Karakung.
 
Scarpetta recalled that heading to the first tee at Cobbs Creek sometimes would result in a match against some of the course regulars.
 
"They were eager to give us some money once in a while," he said. "We were up to the task most of the time, and they'd kind of tell us to leave."
 
After college, Scarpetta tried qualifying for the PGA Tour in Brownsville, Texas, a field that consisted of 429 players competing for 25 spots. He said that when he looked at the players on the practice range and saw how perfect all the swings were, "That was enough."
 
Scarpetta qualified for two U.S. Amateur championships. He competed five times in the Pennsylvania Amateur, coming close once in 1971, between his freshman and sophomore years at Penn, when "I had the lead with not too many holes to go and kind of backed up the bus," he said.
 
His skills remain sharp. He has shot his age once and joked that he "choked on nails a couple of other times because I knew I was right there." He and Gershey finished second last year in the Pennsylvania Super-Seniors Better-Ball event.
 
Scarpetta said his induction into the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame made him think of his college teammates and the hope that they could someday receive the same honor. He also remembers the good times competing alongside them.
 
"The nice thing about it is, it makes me think back," he said. "I don't have any bad memories. They're just fond memories. Competing in the same tournaments as Crenshaw and Kite, guys that won U.S. Opens and Masters, it was a good time."