{"id":32533,"date":"2011-04-08T08:12:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T12:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=32533"},"modified":"2011-04-13T08:26:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T12:26:52","slug":"uconn-golfers-ready-to-tee-off-at-new-england-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/04\/uconn-golfers-ready-to-tee-off-at-new-england-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Golfers Ready to Tee Off at New England Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Matt<\/a>
Junior Matt Dziubina. Photos provided by Athletic Communications<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

College golf is different than most spring sports. Like tennis and track & field, it is an individual sport that is competed as a team sport. But more than most other individual sports, the physical and mental requirements can overwhelm a player\u2019s skill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the way college golf is set up, it\u2019s like a sprint,\u201d says Huskies golf coach Dave Pezzino. \u201cYou come in the night before for a practice round. You then play 36 holes in one day, carrying your bag walking. If you\u2019re struggling with your golf swing, that\u2019s a long day. You have to have the understanding that if you\u2019re not playing great, you still can find a way to get it in the hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Husky golfers head into this weekend\u2019s New England Division I Golf Championships at Newport National Country Club in Newport, R.I., they are looking to repeat last year\u2019s success, when they won the tournament, and then continue it on the following weekend in Innisbrook, Fla., site of the 2011 Big East Men\u2019s Golf Championship.<\/p>\n

Matt Dziubina is the team\u2019s leading golfer during the spring season.<\/p>\n

“Matt is doing a great job managing his game,\u201d Pezzino says. \u201cHe is hitting it well and he is scoring well for the Huskies. I like how he is all business in the course and nothing seems to bother him on the course. He doesn\u2019t get too high or too low. He is in total control of his mental game. His preparation has been well focused.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Brian<\/a>
Sophomore Brian Hughes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pezzino, in his third year at UConn and 13th overall as a collegiate coach, says the challenge of coaching college players is to understand each golfer\u2019s abilities, knowing they have worked to develop their own game with other golf professionals for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI rely on them to work with their home pro as well as me,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not the kind of coach that wants to jump in on everybody\u2019s golf swing. I don\u2019t want to be micromanaging them. I feel confident in my ability to see their swing and what works. These guys have logged in years and years with their own coaches. They do a great job of doing their work in the winter time, and they\u2019ve used that pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Adam<\/a>
Junior Adam Vaccari.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today\u2019s young golfers all can drive the ball off the tee, so Pezzino spends time working with the Huskies to sharpen their short game, emphasizing accuracy with short irons, wedges, and putting.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of their time has been spent on wedges and getting their distances down again from 110 to 75 yards into the green,\u201d he says of the team\u2019s practice rounds. \u201cThey\u2019ve even invented games in our indoor facility specifically around chipping and putting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet a player\u2019s mental approach to the game is often the most challenging aspect of golf, something Pezzino emphasizes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat our group has been doing better and better, is managing the mental side of it, not trying to kill themselves over every shot that is not 100 percent perfect. For the younger player, that is most certainly the challenge,\u201d Pezzino says. \u201cWe talk about it all the time. The minute you get upset, your brain starts shutting down. You stop thinking properly. In a lot of our pre-round meetings, I\u2019ll mention we make sure to manage ourselves first, not the golf ball. The older they get, the better they get at it. It\u2019s not easily acquired. It\u2019s such an untapped area of training of young players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Head golf coach Dave Pezzino emphasizes the mental approach to the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-32533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 06:21:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32533"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32620,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32533\/revisions\/32620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32533"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=32533"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}