Bergen Record Male Athlete of the Week: Rory Asselta, St. Joseph

Let’s get one thing clear right off the tee.

The state’s top high school golfer, Rory Asselta, was not named after career Grand Slam winner Rory McIlroy, one of the game’s greatest players.

But the current World No. 2 and reigning Masters champion is Asselta’s current favorite player.

“I love the way he swings and the way he carries himself on the golf course,” said Asselta, whose father, Ryan, confirmed he named Rory for a good friend from middle school and in honor of his wife Kim’s Irish heritage. “I also love Scottie Scheffler’s game.”

Asselta started young, swinging a plastic golf club at 18 months old with his older brother Michael, who was 3 years old at the time.

“They were born when I was in television in Boston,” Ryan Asselta told MGA Magazine in a 2023 story. “My wife worked normal hours, but I was working nights for the FOX affiliate in Boston and didn’t go to work until 3:30. So what does a young dad do with two kids under 3 all day in the summertime?

“I got them plastic clubs and I would chip and we’d put a stick in the ground and be out there for hours. Then they wanted to start going to the driving range and they just took to the sport.”

Rory, who now lives on the grounds of Ramsey Golf and Country Club after the family moved back to Bergen County in 2020, entered his first tournament at 5½ years old. He regularly plays on the American Junior Golf Association tour, which takes the family, including older brother Michael, last year’s North Jersey Golfer of the Year, all around the country.

He’s won a tournament in Northern Kentucky and has played tournaments in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas in the last year alone, not to mention many events in the tri-state area and near the family’s vacation site in North Carolina.

Memorial Day weekend will find him at another AJGA event, at the renowned Streamsong Black course in Florida that was designed by Hall of Fame architect Gil Hanze. Rory Asselta will be checking the architecture, not just to figure out where to hit his next shot.

“Whether I end up playing professionally or not, I want to stay in sports for a career,” said Asselta, who was a point guard on the St. Joseph freshman basketball squad last winter. “I’d really like to be a golf course architect.”

An elective art course he took this year in 3-D perspective might come in handy one day. Asselta loves to draw golf holes, and when he passes a nice vacant piece of land, he tries to envision how a par-3 hole would look on the property.

Although he already drives the ball 285 yards, he has also shown great prowess on the shorter holes. He has five holes-in-one to his credit, including one on the first par-3 he played as a high school golfer at Spook Rock Golf Club (Montebello, N.Y.), from 175 yards out with a 7-iron at the Green Knights’ first dual meet.

Rory scored seven tournament wins in the nine the undefeated Green Knights played this year, and the youngster fit right in with his older teammates.

“He came into a team that was already very good along with another freshman (close friend Justin Peck), and they just jelled immediately with the team,” St. Joseph coach Kevin Rooney said. “The fact that his brother is on the team helped obviously, but he jumped right in there and became part of it.”

And don’t expect that to change even if transferring to an elite golf academy or moving South to be in better weather is something the Asselta family has talked about. That’s something the last Bergen County golfer to make the PGA tour, Ramapo’s Morgan Hoffmann, did after he won his second straight TOC title as a sophomore in 2006.

“I have a lot of friends and family here, my brother has just one more year at St. Joseph’s, my dad works here (as director of engagement and media) and my grandfather (director of performing arts) John does too,” Rory said. “We’ve talked about it a little bit, but things are really good here and I’m not anxious to get away.”

One further incentive, perhaps: The NJSIAA has crowned state individual champions since 1934, and Hoffmann is one of just seven golfers to win twice. No one has ever won three.

Rory Asselta

Sport: Golf

School: St. Joseph

Class: Freshman. Age: 15

Accomplishment: Won both the Dan Luciano Bergen County and State Tournament of Champions individual titles, and led St. Joseph to a dominant State Tournament of Champions victory.

Also nominated: Chris Matesic of Paramus, Anthony Walter of Park Ridge, and JT Deriso of Pascack Valley for baseball; Ylan Tapper of Garfield and Douglas “Trip” Dalrymple of Lakeland for volleyball; Owen Keating of Pompton Lakes, Luke Davis of Demarest, Jalen Balbuena of Fort Lee track, and Saundrae Palmer Jr. of Dwight Morrow for track and field; and Ishwar Idnani of Park Ridge for tennis.