The Ace
Thank this UConn Trustee and All-American Husky hammer thrower for giving Connecticut its Travelers Championship.
Travelers recently added to a long history of funding UConn projects by helping UConn Hartford students pay for housing. The 2025 Travelers Championship takes place June 16–22.
For most of the year, UConn teams dominate the sports headlines throughout Connecticut. But that changes in mid-June, when the PGA Tour comes to town for the Travelers Championship, played at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell.
The roots of the tournament date back to 1952. Then known as the Insurance City Open, the 1956 title went to a young golfer named Arnold Palmer. Today, as a Signature Event on the PGA Tour, it attracts the best players in the world, with an annual prize pool of $20 million — and as one of the top attended golf events in the country, raises millions of dollars each year for Connecticut charities. So you might be surprised to hear that it almost disappeared in the early 2000s due to a lack of corporate sponsorship.
Travelers stepped up to save the day, led by executive vice president and chief administrative officer Andy Bessette ’75 (CLAS). Since the beginning of the company’s title sponsorship, he has partnered with tournament director Nathan Grube to deliver one of the best stops on the tour. A member of the UConn Board of Trustees, Bessette was a four-time All-American hammer thrower for UConn track and field. A record-setting win in the 1980 Olympic track and field trials earned him a spot on the 1980 U.S. Olympic team, and later that summer, he received the Congressional Gold Medal for his patriotism in supporting the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games.
“As a world-class athlete, you learn quickly that if you accept the status quo, … then you are going to go backwards.”
“As a world-class athlete, you learn quickly that if you accept the status quo, if you accept where you are skill-wise and competitively, then you are going to go backwards,” Bessette told us on the eve of last year’s Travelers Championship from the clubhouse at TPC River Highlands. “You never ever stop trying to get better. That is what our rallying cry about the tournament has been for the past 20 years. We have a show for one week, but we work all year to plan to get everything right. And part of the week is taking a look around and making a list of things we can improve on for next year’s tournament.”
At the top of that checklist for Bessette and his team is making sure the players and their families and caddies all have a positive experience with the event — and that is a yearlong effort. “We have relationships with every single professional golfer in the world, and it doesn’t matter where they are from or what tour they play on,” says Bessette, referring to both the PGA Tour and the fairly new LIV Golf tour. “It’s very important to establish a relationship with the families. I know Rory McIlroy, and I also know his daughter is Poppy. I know that Bennett is the son of Meredith and Scottie Scheffler. We send players a Travelers onesie whenever they have a baby. That’s just the way we run things around here. We befriend the whole family, and these relationships will go on forever. People ask, Are you recruiting players for this year’s tournament? I say no, we go out and see our friends. It’s relationship building.”
As a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team, Bessette received the Congressional Gold Medal for his patriotism in supporting the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games.
Bessette learned those skills at UConn, thanks to the way his coaches treated him. “The reason I love UConn is how people supported me when I was there and after I graduated. Coach (Bob) Kennedy was my throwing coach and John Toner was the athletic director, and they always encouraged me to come back to Storrs to train right up to my time as an Olympian. Coach Bill Kelleher was always supportive. There wasn’t a lot of money those days for prospective Olympians, so it was tough, and they always were there.”
He compares his UConn experience to when he gave a young, unknown golfer named Webb Simpson a sponsor’s exemption to play in the 2008 Travelers. “Webb was so grateful for the opportunity and asked if there was any way he could thank us,” says Bessette. “I told him not to abandon the Travelers when he became famous.
“Fast forward to 2012, and Webb wins the U.S. Open, which was played all the way out in San Francisco that year, and our tournament was the next week. And where do you think he was the next week? The Travelers Championship.
“The word of a person means the world to me,” says Bessette. “That’s what the people of UConn did for me. There was no money and little fame, but there was something — there was love and respect, and the school never let me down. The people there helped me every way they could, and that’s why I give back to UConn to this day.”
By Mike Enright
Photo by Peter Morenus
This is a great story! Thank you for the insight. I try to go to the Traveler’s Championship every year – it is a great event! And I have had my picture taken with Webb – I like him even more now for keeping his word.