Telegraph file photo by TOM KING Nashua Country Club's Phil Pleat, center, congratulates Concord's Matt Paradis in the NH State Am three years ago in Keene. Pleat will be playing on his home NCC course next week in this year's Am.

The stars-are-aligned feel is too good to resist.

So, best to push the potential turning points, story twists and pivotal characters to the wings and jump straight to the main plot.

Phil Pleat is playing at home – Nashua Country Club – in the 117th New Hampshire Amateur golf championship beginning Monday.

For starters, that is a pretty good “Now-Showing” headline to put in lights.

Not that this year’s six-day summer slugfest will lack for intrigue and suspense, but the buildup begins not just at the 104-year-old club that rose from a small country farmhouse, host of 13 previous State-Ams, but virtually next door at the Pleat family home.

This state’s most decorated amateur golfer, whose gaudy resume is peppered with major titles and more N.H. Golf Association victories than any other player in the state, can pretty much walk to the course at which he is a member should he want.

Reflective, Pleat recalls not only the many golf memories of where he has lived and played so often, but watching his children learn to walk on the green fairways nearby.

Some will surely see the now 64-year-old’s appearance in the Am next month as a swan song of sorts.

Wiser peers know better.

Pleat, though, is conventionally understated. “It’s special to play at home, no doubt,” he said. Hopefully, I play well.”

Pleat captured the last of his three amateur titles at Nashua in 1997, 10 years after moving into the Fairway Avenue neighborhood.

He regards that week as one of his most treasured golf memories. He won two matches in extra holes and dispatched Matt Eaton in the 36-hole final in front of all his family, including his parents, his wife, Lisa, and his children, James, then 7, and Jennie, then 10. Family history loomed large and heightened the drama. Pleat’s brother-in-law, Jay Leonard, is a two-time State-Am finalists and Jay and Lisa’s father, Thomas Leonard Jr., won eight N.H. amateurs, a mark that stood for 48 years. His streak of six straight wins in the event still holds.

Deeper back still, Thomas Leonard Jr.’s dad, TL Leonard, was the State-Am winner in 1922, the 22nd time the event was conducted, and that win was at Nashua.

Pleat’s greatest golfing accomplishment, perhaps, is a runner-up finish at the 2011 U.S. Senior Amateur Championship at Kinloch Golf Club in Virginia. Pleat also owns back-to-back N.E. Senior Amateur titles, in 2016 and 2017.

“I guess you can say I’ve seen everything now, so I expect anything,” Pleat, in his 40th year as a financial adviser, said. “I really just try to play my game and play the golf course, unless certain situations arise in match play.”

This year’s State-Am conversation is not complete without mentioning at least a few other players who, on paper, figure to contend.

One of those would be defending champion John DeVito, the Passaconaway member who has been on a roll. He grew up in Nashua working in the club’s bag room for a couple of summers.

DeVito, 30, won last year at Portsmouth and recently captured the Players Invitational at Baker Hill in Newbury by four shots over Pat Pelletier. DeVito was co-medalist at the 2017 State-Am at Bretwood and lost to eventual champion Mike Martel (who has since turned pro) in the quarterfinals.

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