Vince Zachetti looked down at his phone and pondered as to why amateur golf legend and longtime friend Sean Knapp was calling him.
Zachetti, at dinner with about a dozen friends, as well as his wife, was initially concerned that something may be wrong. That feeling built when Knapp called him again and then sent a text message which simply read, ‘Call me.’
Zachetti nervously and quietly stepped out of the room to return Knapp’s call.
“Sean told me that he wanted me to play in a corporate golf outing on November 12 at Oakmont Country Club,” said Zachetti. “I told him, ‘Sean, if you need me, I’m there.’
“Then, Sean paused and started laughing. He told me that the Hall of Fame committee had voted me in today.
“I didn’t answer him right away, and then said, ‘are you jagging me right now!?’”
The news emotionally overtook Zachetti for a moment, as he had to calm himself down before emerging back into the dining room at Rizzo’s in Greensburg. After dinner, his wife, Karen, asked if everything was okay. Zachetti, with tears building in his eyes, silently responded back that all was well and told her the news that he had been voted into the 2026 Class of the Western Pennsylvania Golf Hall of Fame.
“She gave me a big kiss and I almost started crying,” Zachetti said. “I stood up and told everyone, and they all applauded and I almost cried again.”
Zachetti, a whimsical character, has been one of the region’s strongest amateur golfers in its history and will take his place among Western Pennsylvania’s golf legends on November 12 at Oakmont Country Club when the Western Pennsylvania Golf Association hosts its annual Champions and Hall of Fame Dinner.
His career resume has warranted his induction for some time now. But it’s one that nearly never came to be.
A track and cross-country athlete as a high schooler, Zachetti did not play competitive golf during his youth. He instead thrived in track and was a pole vaulter at Slippery Rock, where he was roommates with now longtime friend Bob Allshouse — who will present him at the Hall of Fame Dinner.
Allhouse was on the golf team, Zachetti on the track team. But Zachetti grew at odds with the Slippery Rock track coach and decided to quit the team. Allshouse implored him to join the golf team.
“I think my best score ever to that point was 85,” he said with a laugh. “What I was doing was not considered golf.”
Zachetti was already familiar with Slippery Rock’s golf coach and decided to join the team the following year. He didn’t play in the first three matches, but got a shot — by strange circumstances — for the fourth competition of the year.
“In our third match, a guy who was our fifth man, he made a nine on this little short hole and coach asked ‘how’d you make a nine,'" recalled Zachett. "He said, ‘coach, I’ve got the shanks.’”
The coach responded that the player would be fine by the next day, but the fifth man refused to play, saying that his intention was to sit at home with his brother and drink beer instead.
“His brother had just got back from Vietnam, and he wanted to drink Genesee Cream Ale all day with him,” said Zachetti with a laugh.
That gave Zachetti — relatively unfamiliar with the rules and having never played real, competitive golf before — a chance to compete in a match for the first time.
The rest, quite literally, is West Penn Golf history.
A longtime member of Hannastown Golf Club, Zachetti became one of 11 players to have claimed the WPGA Amateur Championship at least three times.
His three wins in the West Penn Am came in four years, with victories in 1991, 1992 and 1994. Only seven players — Knapp, Nathan Smith, John Birmingham, Bob Reilly, Arnold Palmer, W.C. Fowens and Zachetti — have won the WPGA Amateur three times in four years.
“That’s a pretty good list of people to be included with,” said Zachetti. “I get chills hearing that. It’s good company.”
Zachetti also claimed the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship in 1989, the Middle Atlantic Amateur Championship in 1992 and was runner-up at the 1993 Pennsylvania Amateur Championship.
He took home a title in the 1997 WPGA Spring Stroke Play and had consecutive victories in the WPGA Super-Senior Four-Ball Championship alongside Allshouse in 2020 and 2021. The duo also claimed the Pennsylvania Senior Four-Ball. Zachetti was named the Pennsylvania Super-Senior Co-Player of the Year in 2020.
In 2012, he left a 19-year career with the United States Postal Service and turned professional, spending three years on the Sunbelt Senior Tour. He returned to Western Pennsylvania and worked in the golf instruction industry.
Zachetti regained amateur status in 2017 and still regularly competes in WPGA and state competitions and championships as a senior amateur player to this day.
He has done so as a member of Hannastown Golf Club, which he was instrumental in getting to join the WPGA as a member club so that he could play in the 1991 WPGA Amateur Championship at nearby Greensburg Country Club.
In his initial appearance, Zachetti won the major championship — the first of his three victories in the event — by eight strokes while proudly representing Hannastown.
“There’s been such great players to belong to Hannastown,” said Zachetti. “Look now, with Nicky Turowski, Mark Goetz, Palmer Jackson, Kevin Fajt. Those guys, they learned the right way. And then, (Knapp) joined us a few years ago.
“With Sean, we’ve been friends and enemies for 40 years. I met him in 1989. For him to call me and tell me, it was special. That was who I would have wanted to call me.”
Zachetti’s accomplishments in golf speak for themselves. But he has also served as a noble representative of his club and the region at large, whether that be in local, state or even national competitions — all of which he has claimed victories in.
With his induction into the Hall of Fame, those achievements are brought into an even larger focus and serve as a token of appreciation not just for how Zachetti has played, but the way in which his life and golf have been proudly interwoven for over five decades now.
“To me, this means everything,” said Zachetti, who possesses a deep well of stories and memories in the game that could likely be scribed into a best seller. “All I’ve ever done is golf. I’ve had who knows how many different jobs, but it all came back to golf.”
For media inquiries, please contact WPGA Director of Communications Josh Rowntree.
