Episode 117: Hittin’ the Links with Coach Pezzino

UConn golf coach Dave Pezzino has been on campus for 17 seasons and has led the elevation of the program to the national scene. He joins us on the latest version of the UConn 360 podcast to talk about that climb and what it is like to be part of the overall Husky culture. Coach Pezzino also gives us some insight on his experience playing alongside Tiger Woods one day, what it is like to be the father of two pairs of twins and what UConn 360 co-host Izzy Harris should concentrate on the next time she hits the driving range!

Listen to Episode 117 at Podbean

Transcript

Mike: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the UConn 360 podcast. I’m Mike Enright from University Communications, again, joined by Izzy Harris, also University Communications. And today we’re very lucky to have the UConn golf coach, Dave Pizzino, as our guest.

Dave just finished his 17th season here at UConn and has built a strong tradition of golf. Playing on top level courses all over the United States and facing some of the best teams in college golf. Coach Pezzino led UConn to the Big East Championship in 2021 in a trip to the NCAA tournament. He has produced all Northeast and all Big East honors golfers on a regular basis, including this year’s Big East Freshman of the Year, Bradley Salker from Ellington. And he’s got a great, great background. He’s coached Illinois. He was the women’s coach at Florida international. At St. Thomas University in Miami, where he became a student head coach in his senior year. And I want to talk to him about that, what it’s like to be a head coach when you’re a senior in college. Dave, thanks for joining us today.

Dave: Mike, thanks for having me. Izzy, nice to meet you.

Izzy: You too.

Mike So Dave, you’ve been the golf coach at UConn now for 17 years, which is pretty impressive. Hard for me to believe and probably even harder for you to believe. How has the program changed since you first came to Storrs?

Dave: I came in and at the time we were completely non-scholarship. So we had student athletes that had to love UConn and want the opportunity to basically be a walk on. And I ran into some really great dynamic young people that really loved UConn. When I first got here and you know, it was. As much as we could compete, we would finish, you know, middle of the pack, and every now and then we’d have an opportunity to win a tournament, but since then, you know, golf is collegiately across the board has become a lot more competitive. College golf is on TV now both men and women. And you know, I, I think it’s a, it’s a very significant proving ground for the professional ranks. You know, for the men and the women here at UConn, you know, I think going to the AAC and then coming back to the Big East, it’s been a great thing across the board for all of our sports. You know, we have an opportunity to compete for a conference championship in the Big East every year. And that’s significant. You know, as far as everything else goes, we, we play a stronger, more difficult schedule than when I got here. There are a lot of enhancements on the student athlete experience side here at UConn since I’ve started.

Izzy: So obviously we live in New England and the weather can be 60 degrees one day and 32 and snowing the next. How do you deal with the ever changing New England weather and what challenges do you face with that in golf?

Dave: Well, we are an outdoor sport, so some people forget that when they always, they always chirp it. Oh, well, it’s a, you’re in New England. Well, that’s fine, but I think what you’ll see if you look at our current roster, we had three players on the team from Florida. One of the first kids I recruited was from Florida back 17 years ago. And I think you know, the University of Connecticut sells itself. You know, the, the academic prowess of the university, the network of our alumni is a big draw. And I think if you pair that with the world class student athlete experience that we provide our student athletes with, in addition to you know, the national schedule that we play, I think that, that’s an exciting component for a young man to want to become a UConn Husky golfer. Golf is played outside. So, to be able to play at a high level, and to have a game that will travel, and play well elsewhere, you need to play and prepare in tough weather. So we’ve had some qualifiers in flurries, we’ve had some qualifiers in rain, but we also face that on the road.

And that’s a nice thing when, you know, we were in Myrtle Beach this year and the weather wasn’t great the second round and all the teams were pulling out rain jackets and umbrellas. And on our team, I was the only one with a jacket and an umbrella out. I was the only one. So, our guys can really handle it. And it just makes you tougher. Prepares you for professional golf even more so.

Mike: Dave it might be an understatement to say that college sports is undergoing a transition. We’re in a time of transition with the NCAA with the transfer portal, with NIL. We read a lot about it in basketball and football and some other sports. How do those issues affect golf and how do they affect your team?

Dave: Well, I think the Transfer Portal and NIL are here to stay, and I, and I think it is part of the ever changing landscape for for college golf and for college athletics in general. With that being said, the transfer portal we we’ve had guys come, we’ve had guys go. It is what it is. You know, and it’s kind of the ever changing landscape, like I just said, but name, image and likeness has not dipped into golf the way it has other sports outside of the power five conferences. And you know I think from being a parent of two UConn students I still believe UConn is still such a draw academically, student athlete experience more than anything else. So, when we start to build a Name, Image, and Likeness program for golf I know we’ll be ready because our athletic department is, is well supported.

Izzy: I’m going to go off track a little bit here. You mentioned your two children that go to UConn. I hear that you have two sets of twins?

Dave: Yes, Izzy, I have two sets of twins.

Izzy: Oh my gosh, how old are they?

Dave: They’re 20. They’re going to be juniors. And that’s Joe and Matt. And my my second set of twins, my wife and I call them the Bigs and the Littles basketball reference. The littles Danny and Katie are 15 going to be sophomores at Coventry High School. In my house we have three dogs and a cat too. So if you figure where I sit on the depth chart, I’m about 10th on the depth chart. God forbid, a kid brings home a fish and then I’m like 11 or 12. Oh my gosh. So there is just always something going on in the Pezzino household. Yes, we have two Golden Retrievers, so yes.

Izzy: Me too!

Dave: Yeah, they’re amazing. They’re amazing. Yeah, Teddy and Willow. Yep. They’re pretty crazy.

Izzy: So, going back to golf. Sure. Sure. Yukon has had success with golfers going pro and playing in events like the US Open. How hard is it to go pro in golf?

Dave: You know, if you think about it, it’s, it’s difficult because, you know it’s merit based. You know, unless you join the live tour, which is another story all on its own. But you know, normal golf that these young men and women face every year of trying to turn professional. And I say, turn professional. You know, for us that lost a lot of money trying to do that we would be called trunk slammers, because you don’t make any money and you slam your trunk. You know, it’s, you’re paying your own way. The way student athletes do it when they graduate now is really impressive because my group of friends, we don’t have to have kids have caddy jobs or work in the bag room at a certain place. And nowadays they have sponsors that they have a team of people, a physio, a swing coach, mental health coach, a short game person. And that’s expensive. I would say it’s anywhere 100,000 for year one. And that’s just expenses, travel, access to practice and golf equipment that you might need. It is, it is demanding and it’s like 1 percent of NCAA golfers world turn pro. Now the PGA tour has done a great thing with PGA Tour U and they’ve given a lot of a lot of opportunities. And when I say a lot of opportunities, it’s five PGA tours. Opportunities and then there’s some conditional status and then full status and then there’s Korn Ferry. But there are more tours, it’s just, it’s more expensive too.

Izzy: Have you ever met Tiger Woods?

Dave: So I met him in college my teammate Tony Roderick played practiced around with him at the U. S. Amateur. And he hit the par 5 first hole in two and I hit the tree and it dropped straight down and then I hit a 3 wood and then I hit an 8 iron onto the green and Tony was making a joke and said, Hey, Paz, you hit 8 iron into number one and I looked, I’m like, yeah, how’d you know? He goes, oh, and Tiger turned around and goes, you hit 8 iron into number one also? I’m like, yeah, that was my third shot. And it was his second shot. So it took a driver and a three wood for me to catch up with world number one.

Mike: Speaking of your college career, you became a head coach. As I was, as I understand, you became the head coach of the team as a senior while still a student.

Dave: I was.

Mike: Tell us a little bit about that sequence of events.

Dave: So I was at the university of Southern Mississippi, got pretty homesick. When I went to, you know, St. Thomas, I really missed my coach at Southern Miss, Sam Hall, great guy, and my teammates were awesome. I just got homesick, missed South Florida, and went back to St. Thomas and joined a group of guys, and we were informed, I think our second week of school, that the coach was not retained, and they made a coaching change. At the time, we really didn’t have an answer on what was going on with the program, so I started the process of transferring because I had some friends that were playing in the Northeast and they checked with their compliance staff and if we didn’t have golf, I would have an extra year of eligibility. I can go back and and finish and play and so I was walking around campus getting my withdrawal slips signed and I went to Ted Abernathy’s office He was my advisor and I said hey Ted I just need your signature just won’t let you know what’s going on and Ted looked at me and said yeah sure Dave I just wouldn’t take you to be a quitter And I’m, you know, 22, 23 years old at the time.

I’m a senior. And I said, well, Ted, how am I quitting when you guys don’t even have a golf coach? He’s like, why don’t you walk into the AD’s office and tell them that you would do it. And I couldn’t get over the word quitter. You know, I looked at him like, I’m, I’m not a quitter. Well, I could do that. Boy, was I wrong. I had no idea at the time what the heck I was doing. I walked in and Jim Pizzolatto, who was a great baseball man he was our head baseball coach and our athletic director, and Laura Courtley. Todd was the assistant AD at the time. And, you know I’m so grateful for them to say yes. They must’ve had a weak moment or something. I don’t know. I had no coaching experience. All I was, was a wannabe player and they gave me the opportunity. I would we didn’t have a fall semester cause it happened too late. And in the spring, I, I can tell you, I, I drove myself to a tournament because spring break was a mess and guys in the team, Made spring break plans, but I didn’t and I wanted to play in tournaments.

So I drove up to, oh God, Sun City, Tampa. And we played in a tournament there. And I turned in the entry fee, and then turned myself in as the lineup. And Rick Christie, who was a coach at the time, was like, where’s the rest of the team? Why are you here? I’m like, well, I’m the student head coach and I’m playing. They couldn’t believe it. And then they let me play. And then the league, when I went to the head coach’s meeting for the conference championship of the Florida Sun Conference, they were trying to kick me out because they didn’t understand what That I was a student head coach. They thought I was just a player trying to jump into the meeting.

And they passed a rule that they had to have a full-time staff member go to the head coaches meeting. I took over the program. The next year I was also res life person helped with that. I did intramural sports. I was a little bit of a sports information guy. I had volleyball. Izzy, do you know volleyball at all?

Izzy: You’re actually looking at the champion of her rec league.

Dave: Well, young lady, do you know what side out scoring is?

Izzy: That’s a no. I will in about three seconds.

Dave: You will. So you can’t score unless you serve. So volleyball matches, when I was in SID before, I don’t know if Mike did it, volleyball, but those were four or five hour matches. Those were rough. So I did that and then I moved into admissions and I loved that very much because I was in charge of student athletes and it was amazing. And we had a great group of student athletes and an awesome group of coaches. And went to the national championship twice got married in that time. Just, was just a great, great time to be to be a coach, that’s for sure.

Mike: Dave, where does the Big East stand in the golf world? We know where it is in other sports, but where does the Big East stand as a golf conference?

Dave: You know, I, I think when you look at teams before we got here we were a one team league a lot. I could see us getting to two in the near future. I think that You know, this past year, Marquette had a fantastic regular season. The year before, Seton Hall’s our conference champion this year. And two years ago at Yale, they made a great move, and I think they almost made the cut at the regionals, to move on to nationals. You know, it’s, it’s something that’s been emerging and has gotten better. You know, and, and,  you know, it’s, it’s a little bit different than when I was in college and the Big East was a 36 hole event in the fall. And then, you know, it’s changed into a 54 hole event down on Bermuda, which a lot of us don’t play on all the time.

Mike: Dave, you coach a unique sport at UConn and the fact that adults are still playing the sport on a competitive level or what they think is a competitive level. Nobody’s coming up to Jim Mora and saying, Hey, I play tackle football on Sundays how do you execute a block? And maybe a few people play in rec basketball leagues, but nobody’s exactly asking Danny or Geno how they can work on their jump shot.

Dave: I mean, golf, the great thing about golf is it’s a lifetime sport. When you go to the road show or even go to a basketball game or, People coming up to you all the time saying, you know, how do I work on my putting? I just bought this new wedge. Does that happen and do you mind it? Well, more proof that I have the best coaching job on campus is that people do ask that a lot. Like what would I do to help somebody with their putting or I’m coming over the top and I’m hitting a big slice, what would I do? First thing I tell people is to go find a PGA professional to go get a real lesson because me talking with them for five minutes you know, it’s not going to help them. I wasn’t a master instructor with the number one golf school in the country working for Jim McLean at Doral resort and spa. And I worked with, I don’t know, I think like 10 top 50 instructors that were on our teaching staff then. And the most important thing I’ve learned is that there’s a million ways to swing the golf club, so there’s no bad direction to take a person. In my opinion, there’s ways that, you know, you can help folks, but most importantly, I love when people come up and ask, because I want more people to play, I want our game to grow more but I do get that a lot. You know, I get a lot of folks who are gear heads and they want to talk equipment. So that’s really cool.

I appreciate that. But the really cool thing is, at the road show the other night, they asked the coaches in Stamford, if you didn’t coach your sport, what would you coach? And Geno said he would coach golf. eight? So, he would be a lot of fun to watch. Because we don’t have, we have rules officials. We don’t have, You know, basketball officials with a whistle and, you know, violations and stuff. So I think he would have to sit in a cart and really enjoy the golf. So he’d have to be quiet. So CD, you’d have to sit right next to him. So that’d be interesting.

Izzy: Okay. So coming from someone that’s been to the driving range once in her life and left in tears because I didn’t get one good swing. You’re saying that I would need a PGA professional?

Dave: Golf is hard. We can absolutely get you some help, Izzy, but I think the most important thing for you is to understand. Golf is a game of failure. You’re going to miss more than you make. So your expectations have to be met. Disappear. And the first thing you’d want to work on is just making contact. And normally where I’ll take beginners is we’ll start from the putting green and we’ll go back, right? We’ll go putt, have you get some success with making some putts and getting the ball close to the hole with a putter in your hand. And then, you know, go to chipping and then pitching because all those are many full swings. You probably went to the driving range, grabbed the biggest club in your bag and tried to hit it that probably.

Izzy: I don’t remember because it was such a traumatic experience for me.

Dave: To practice at some point. The guys will help you.

Izzy: Oh, gosh. You don’t know what you’re in for. That’s okay.

Dave: No, you’re always welcome.

Izzy: Oh, I appreciate that. So, you’ve been here 17 years.

Izzy: That means you started when I was 8 years old.

Dave: Oh, jeez. Thanks.

Izzy: Sorry. I just have to have to age it a little bit. How do you keep it fun and interesting every season? Do you do things to change it up?

Dave: I am very blessed. I have some really great young men every year and we, we recruit you know, the person first, you know, the golfer second and you know, or maybe third because of the academic component that we ask our students to be under. And I think you know, every year is just a different mission. There’s some years that we’re, we’re so competitive that we can back off the, the, the competition on, in certain areas of the year and have a little bit more fun. But most importantly, we’re, we’re chasing Big East titles, banners and championships. And what’s not fun about that when you look at what happens with UConn. So pretty cool deal to, to, to raise a Big East championship banner and beyond.

Izzy: I’m in the MBA program, but maybe I can be like a pro college. There you go. Golf.

Mike: It’s never too late. No. Golf, game of a lifetime. It is. It really is. Absolutely.

Izzy: So you said you’re not a PGA professional. But are you a mini golf professional?

Dave: Professional? I’m pretty good. Now, my wife has beaten the doors off of me a lot. And we we, we go up to in Brewster, Mass. We have a putt, Pizzino family putt, putt championship, because we basically have a We’re a golf team with a, with a sub, right? We have six people. So we go blue eyes against green eyes. I get the two blue eyed kids and my wife gets the green eyes and we get after it. But my wife is sneaky good, right? Like she’s, and it’s annoying cause she’s pretty she’s pretty competitive too. So she’s beat the doors off me plenty of times. It runs in the family. Yes. So no, I am not good

Mike: So to wrap it up, what’s the answer to the question for you, if you could coach another sport at UConn?

Dave: So, in my early life, I was also a high school basketball official. And I’ve gotten back into that. I would love to coach middle school or freshman basketball somewhere. And that’s probably about it. I don’t think I could coach high school. In college.

Mike: Dave, thanks for joining us today. Thank you all for listening to the UConn 360 podcast and look forward to having you the next time.