Roland R. MacKenzie grew up in Washington, D.C., and took his first golf steps at Columbia County Club in Chevy Chase, MD. Columbia head professional Fred McLeod, the 1908 US Open Champion, was his instructor, and in the middle 1920s, MacKenzie was a dominant schoolboy golfer while at Western High School.
MacKenzie qualified for his first of eight USGA Amateur Championships at the age of 17, quickly earning a reputation as one of America’s finest golfers. In 1924, he earned one of 32 spots in Match Play. In 1927 he won the Qualifying Medal and advanced to the semi-finals, where he was defeated by Chick Evans in an often talked about, 37-hole battle. In 1926, when just a 19-year-old Freshman at Brown University, MacKenzie was named to his first Walker Cup Team that included as teammates Bobby Jones, Jesse Sweetser, Frances Ouimet, and George Von Elm. MacKenzie’s match record in three appearances as a Walker Cup team member was an outstanding 5-1.
Over the years, MacKenzie compiled a record that included Middle Atlantic Amateur Championships 23 years apart (1925 & 1948, a tournament record) and four Maryland State Golf Association Father-Son Championships. In 1965, he won the MSGA Senior Amateur Championship at the Baltimore Country Club. MacKenzie won the DC Amateur in 1924 and the DC Junior Championship in 1925. (These events are now hosted by the Washington Metropolitan Golf Association). In the mid-1930s, he briefly turned professional and worked at Congressional Country Club.
In 1975 MacKenzie was inducted into the Brown University Hall of Fame, and in 1983 he was inducted into the Middle Atlantic Golf Association Hall of Fame.
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