STORRS, Conn. – The UConn men's golf team is set to open the 2024-25 season with The Doc Gimmler Red & Black tournament this Monday and Tuesday at the Bethpage State Park Red and Black Course in Farmingdale, N.Y.
The three-round, 54-hole event, hosted by St. John's, features 12 teams as the Huskies get their first taste of tournament play before getting ready to host their own tournament, the UConn Invitational at GreatHorse at the end of the month.
With a tournament on a world class course right out of the gates, head coach Dave Pezzino used these early weeks of the season to put his team in as challenging an environment as possible.
"Our goal during qualifying is have the guys be exposed to really, really hard golf courses," stated the head coach who is entering his 18th season at the helm of the Huskies. "Ellington Ridge was in fantastic shape, very challenging. GreatHorse was also in great shape and we played both courses as far back as we could get it and made it a difficult and demanding test. We had two different stages and am excited to say we had two underclassmen win the two stages with Alex (Heard) taking the first and Bradley (Sawka) the second."
"The whole idea of these past few weeks was how competitive can we make it and how demanding of an environment can we put our guys into to get them ready," stated Pezzino. "The Red Course is fantastic and so is the Black Course, which has hosted a U.S. Open, PGA Championship and will host a Ryder Cup next year, so that hard will be "hard", so we made Ellington and GreatHorse as difficult as we could."
Rolling out of the preseason qualifying into tournament play, Pezzino will roll out the line-up of sophomores Brad Swaka (Ellington, Conn.) and Alex Heard (Boca Raton, Fla.), junior Connor Goode (Glastonbury, Conn.), senior Ray Dennehy (Princeton, Mass.) and freshman Matt Costello (Taunton, Mass.) for The Doc Gimmler with senior Trevor Lopez (Winchester, Mass.) earning the individual spot thanks winning an 18-hole playoff in qualifying.
If nothing else, this first tournament will be the Huskies' first shot at teeing it up against some new competition and seeing where they stand. "It's a big deal to be paired with someone who's not in your school colors and has a different bag. You get a scorecard in your hand and your on the road. We are trying to put our guys to have their game be able to travel. You won't get a better test than Bethpage Red & Black.
Sawka is coming off a season where he earned the BIG EAST Freshman of the Year honors after leading all rookies with a 73.4 stroke average. He shot a season-low 69 three times while playing in nine events while his stroke average was second on the team. Sawka also was second on the team with 11 rounds of par or better. He also found himself on the 2024 PING All-Northeast Region team.
Heard also put together a strong freshman campaign for the Huskies, playing in nine tournament last season to post a 73.9 average over 26 rounds. He shot nine rounds at par or better and had his best finish of the season when he tied for 17th in helping the Huskies win the Surf Club Invitational.
Dennehy was another Husky who saw his first action for UConn last season after transferring in from Lafayette College for his junior and senior seasons. Dennehy was one of three Huskies to play in all 11 events and posted a 74.0 average over 29 events. He posted a pair of top-five and top-20 finishes highlighted by a tie for first at the Surf Club Invite.
Goode was another Husky who played in all 11 events, finishing the season with a 74.3 average. He played seven rounds at par or better and had two top-20 finishes and a top-five, highlighted by his first collegiate win when he took home the trophy at the UConn Invitational at GreatHorse. Lopez saw action in three events last season and recorded a top-20 finish when he tied for 18th at the UConn Invite. Costello will make his collegiate debut this weekend as one of two freshmen on this year's roster.
"This is our first tournament of the year and really excited to see who we are and see what it looks like when get to play golf against someone else."
The Huskies will hit the course against the likes of the host Red Storm as well as Columbia, Harvard, Hofstra, Iona, Lafayette, Lehigh, LIU, North Dakota State, Towson, and Villanova. The field will play two rounds on Monday on the 7,092 yard, par 70 Red Course. The tournament rounds out play on Tuesday on the 7,468 yard, par 71 Black Course. The Doc Gimmler tournament will be playing on the premier Bethpage Black for the first time in 28 years.
About Bethpage Black:
Bethpage Black has hosted the world's most premier golf tournaments starting with the 2002 U.S. Open, billed the "People's Open," as the first-ever major to be played at a public golf course. The Long Island track welcomed the U.S. Open once again in 2009 and hosted its third major, the PGA Championship in 2019. In September 2025, the track will serve as the site of The Ryder Cup and will join Oak Hill Country Club as the second-ever New York course to host the competition between the United States and Europe. St. John's alumnus Keegan Bradley is set to captain the United States team.
The 7,468-yard track is widely considered one of the most difficult and pristine courses in the country. Bethpage Black is ranked the seventh-best public golf course in the United States, according to GolfDigest.com.
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