Around Augusta, amateur isn’t an insult. Anything but. The Masters started as a private tournament precisely so its founding member, Bobby Jones, could play in it without going pro. Jones, who won the grand slam while he was working as a lawyer, once described professional golfers as “uneducated club servants”.

That was back when gentlemen thought it was vulgar to get paid to play. Cricket had a similar arrangement. Sometime in the mid-20th century it switched. Professional became the compliment, amateur the put-down. Except around here, where they like to think they still play Jones’s way.

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There are six amateurs in the field this year. Five of them are kids, between 17 and 22, who came through regional amateur championships. For them, amateurism is just a phase. They all have plans to go pro soon. And then there is Matt Parziale, 30. He used to have a dream about playing as a professional too and spent three years chasing after it on the mini-tour circuit. He woke up from it when he crashed out of a qualifying tournament for the US Open in 2012. These days he works full-time as a fireman in his home town of Brockton, a half-hour drive south of Boston but still plays in his spare time.

Parziale won the US Mid-Amateur last year. The tournament is open to anyone 25 or over who has a USGA handicap under 3.4. First prize is a spot in the field at the Masters and the US Open. Typically the men who win it work well-paid, white-collar jobs. Of the past 10, five worked in financial management, two in real estate, and another was an insurance executive. So Parziale is a rare bird in Augusta, a blue-collar golfer. “Brockton is a tough city,” he says, “it’s gone pretty downhill since my dad was a kid but I love it. I’m building a house there.” Right now around 19% of the residents live below the poverty line.

Parziale was not a country-club kid. His father, Vic, taught him how to play at the Brockton Fairgrounds, with a bucket of balls, an old club and an empty stretch of turf.Vic Parziale was a fireman too, for 32 years. He retired last November. Now his only job is caddying for his boy. “We were taking a shower right after I had won the Mid-Am,” Parziale says, “and the first thing he said was: ‘I don’t think I can caddie at the Masters.’ And I said: ‘What do you mean?’ And he said: ‘I can’t read the putts. I told him he hasn’t read a putt for me in 12 years, so I don’t know why he would start now.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matt Parziale, above, has become a firefighter like his father. Photograph: Boston Globe via Getty Images

Vic thinks his boy quit professional golf too soon but was proud he decided to become a fireman. Matt says his favourite memory is the time they fought a fire together. He doesn’t care to talk much about the work. It’d be too much like bragging. He just says it’s a “dangerous job”. He’s actually had to take this year off, because he was worried he would get injured. He has already had to miss five months when he bust his knee. Had to reschedule his wedding, too, because it clashed with the US Open.

“Usually every house fire we go into, you leave a little banged up,” Parziale says. “I mean, we’re pulling walls, ceilings, cutting holes in roofs. We’re pretty much destroying the house, is what we’re doing. Because you’re trying to find the fire. It gets in the walls and the attic. You have stuff flying everywhere, people swinging tools everywhere.

“A lot of things can happen and you can’t see a thing. You might as well close your eyes. It’s pitch black. It’s not like the movies.” He is too plainspoken to pretend the pressure helps his game. “Just because I fought a fire doesn’t mean golf’s any easier.”

Parziale says the hours suit him. He works a 24-hour shift, has two days off, then another 24-hour shift and four days off. Which means he can be on the course six days out of eight. But still. When he won the Mid-Am he got home at 2am and started work at 7am. When he was playing a tournament at Brookline last summer, he shot 66 in the second round, went home, worked an overnight shift, came back in the morning, shot 71 and won.“The way I look at this game, you can make what you want of it,” he says. “I just put a lot of work in to get here, so that’s all I see it as.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matt Parziale, right, shares a joke with Rory McIlroy in a practice round at Augusta. Photograph: Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS/Sipa USA/Rex Shutterstock

Like every other golfer his age, Parziale was inspired by Tiger Woods. He is hoping to play a practice round with him on Wednesday. Woods wrote Parziale a letter congratulating him on the Mid-Am. Maybe Woods gets it. He once spent weeks training with the US special forces, on and off, even dreamed about joining up. Just like his father, Earl, who was a Green Beret. He wanted to know what life was like outside the professional bubble, working some more serious cause.

He can ask Parziale all about it. “I make all decisions with no regrets. I don’t look back. So, yeah, I enjoy where I am. I’m very fortunate to be able to do two things I love doing – playing competitive golf and then have a career I really do enjoy.”