Montauk Downs Welcomes the East End's First Female Head Professional

The rolling hills of Montauk Downs Golf Course will have a new face — but also an old face, but also a young face — at its helm this year.

Angela Tocco, who grew up playing golf at the “The Downs” and worked in the pro shop first as a golf shop clerk and then as a swing instructor, has been appointed the new head golf professional — the first female head professional at the celebrated course and on the East End.

At just 25 years old, she will also be one of the youngest professionals to run a major golf operation anywhere — a challenge she says she’s embracing with enthusiasm.

“I grew up at the Downs, since I was like 5, and once I got out of high school this was pretty much home base,” she said. In 2014, she started working in the pro shop in summers. “I’ve been really fortunate to work at places and with people who gave me a lot of on-the-job training that has helped me get here, and I’m really looking forward to getting things going around here this summer.”

Tocco worked at the Downs from 2014-2019, and again in 2020. After two years at South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, she was tapped by the new operators of the Downs’ golf program — who also run the golf program at Bethpage State Park.

Tocco was raised in Tappan Zee but spent summers in Montauk, where her parents, Tom and Janice, run a charter fishing boat. After high school, she headed south to the University of Louisiana, where she played on the golf team and continued working at the Downs in summers but had figured she was headed toward a career in business and life in New York City.

The COVID-19 pandemic threw a detour into that plan that became a new path for life.

“I was a COVID graduate, the spring of 2020, and came home abruptly into the middle of lockdown,” she said. “I had thought a little bit about teaching golf professionally during my senior year. I’d done an internship in college with a marketing firm and it was dreadful. I very quickly realized that the plans I’d had to move to the city and have an office gig were just not going to work for me.”

That realization, and the particular wrinkles in American life the pandemic had introduced, aligned serendipitously for Tocco. The Downs was one of the first public facilities to reopen under the state’s phased in reopening and people freed from the demands of 9-to-5 office schedules flocked to golf courses in droves. New golfers poured through the doors seeking lessons, but with travel restrained, golf teachers were in short supply.

Tocco made quick work of the PGA of America’s golf management program, and she was ready to start instructing the new wave of pandemic aficionados.

“The pandemic, I hate to say it, but it was really the perfect thing to put me in this direction,” Tocco said.

With female professionals in growing demand across the country even before the pandemic, thanks to an explosion in popularity of the game among women, it didn’t take long for word to spread that there was a new girl on the range.

By the winter of 2021, Tim Garvin, the longtime professional at South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, who has been honored by the PGA of America for his mentoring of young professionals, came calling and lured Tocco into his coaching tree.

At South Fork, Tocco says, she had the opportunity to delve deeper into the multi-faceted skill-set that a modern PGA Professional must have — which ranges from being a skilled instructor of golf, to a retail store manager, logistical field marshal and social director.

“Working for Tim, I was able to get my hands on all parts of the job,” she said. “At South Fork, the pros get to do a little bit of everything: teaching, running the camps, golf cart fleet management, setting up for big events.”

As she was finishing her second season at South Fork, happy in the job and not really looking for a new gig, her phone rang.

The call came from Kelley Brook and Megan Younkman, the two women who have managed the golf operations at Bethpage State Park’s celebrated quintet of courses, for the last five years. The pair had just won the bid with the state to run the pro shop, summer camps and instruction programs at Montauk Downs and they’d heard that there was a young female professional who knew the club, knew the regulars and the community and they wanted her to be the head professional — just the third in nearly five decades.

“It hadn’t really been on my radar at all — I’d heard they had taken over and I had intended to go over and introduce myself, but the call came kind of out of the blue — I figured they were calling to ask where a set of keys were or something,” she said. “When I first told Tim about the job, he was thrilled and very supportive and he actually mentioned that I’d be the first female head pro out here, which hadn’t even occurred to me. And I don’t think it was even about that specifically for Kelley and Megan as much as they wanted someone with connection to the community and who had worked there and was familiar with the operation.”

Since taking over, the new operators have undertaken an extensive renovation of the pro shop and bar and Tocco has been putting her touch on the merchandise side of the business — with new apparel she helped design herself and some more youthful selections from top golf apparel and accessories manufacturers.

Tocco says that she is excited to dig into the course’s tournaments, leagues and special programs.

“That’s what I have the most fun with,” she said. “Making the event creative and having 30 to 40 people who at the end of the day are happy with the format and had a great time and it’s all about golf. That’s what I love.”