Latest news with #CaddieHallofFame
Daily Mirror
04-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Legendary golfer dies after suffering stroke at Augusta as PGA release statement
Jim Dent became a legendary golfer across his 50-year professional career within the game and the 12-time PGA Tour Champions winner has passed away after suffering from a stroke Legendary golfer Jim Dent has died at the age of 85 after suffering from a stroke. The PGA confirmed the sad news with a lengthy statement. They announced that Dent had suffered from a stroke just a day after it had been confirmed Augusta National had plans for Tiger Woods to design a par 3 course at The Patch. He passed away on May 2. 'A lot of people will remember Jim Dent for how far he hit the ball, and he really did. Yet his long-term success, especially on our Tour, proved Jim was more than just long off the tee,' said PGA TOUR Champions President Miller Brady. 'Jim was as easy going as he was competitive, and he added so much during his time as a PGA TOUR Champions player. We offer our sincere condolences to his entire family.' Dent's grandson also posted some kind words on social media alongside a heartwarming video. He wrote: 'I'm grateful I was able to have you as my grandfather…… until the next time Chinababy. Thank you for the foundation.' Dent's association with golf started during his early years as a caddy at Augusta, where he eventually worked on the Masters. He was inducted into the Caddie Hall of Fame in 2022. 'We are honored to welcome Jim Dent as the newest member of the Caddie Hall of Fame,' said Jeff Harrison, WGA senior vice president of advisory and special initiatives. 'Jim embodies the gold standard of hard work and professionalism, and we are inspired by how he utilized his time as a youth caddie to propel himself to the highest level in the game of golf.' Dent then got a chance with a club for the first time at the municipal course known as The Patch. He secured a qualifying card for the PGA Tour card through qualifying school in 1970. Dent never met the qualifying criteria to play at the Masters but made the cut in eight of the 11 majors he played - six at the PGA Championship, five at the U.S. Open. But he was more known for the famous length he could get on his drives. 'As a man of color, I thank Mr. Dent for what he did,' Ira Miller, general manager of Augusta Municipal GC told the Augusta Chronicle. 'He paved the way so I could be in this position. He paved the way for us all.' Dent's legacy is being continued by son Joseph, who has also embarked on a career within golf himself. 'He has encouraged me to always follow my dream, to do what I love,' Joseph said before Dent's death. 'His advice has been simple – you have to put in the work. It's his fundamental belief.' 'I have read so many stories about him and while I can only imagine what it was like for him, I know he had to roll with the punches,' Joseph added. 'That's why I admire him and why he inspires me. He had a belief in himself. He let his clubs do the talking.'
Reuters
04-05-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
Jim Dent, a Black golf pioneer, dies at 85
May 4 - Jim Dent, a pioneering Black golfer, one of the PGA Tour's longest hitters and a 12-time winner on what is now PGA Tour Champions, died at age 85 on Friday. Dent, who died a week before his birthday in his native Augusta, Ga., was recovering from the effects of a stroke, the PGA Tour said on its website. "A lot of people will remember Jim Dent for how far he hit the ball, and he really did. Yet his long-term success, especially on our tour, proved Jim was more than just long off the tee," said PGA Tour Champions President Miller Brady. "Jim was as easy going as he was competitive, and he added so much during his time as a PGA Tour Champions player. We offer our sincere condolences to his entire family." Dent worked as a teenager caddying at Augusta Municipal Golf Course, known at "The Patch." He also worked at Augusta National Golf Club but in his adult years never qualified as a player for the Masters in 16 consecutive campaigns on the PGA Tour, when he never appeared in less than 22 tournaments a season. Turning pro in 1966 and qualifying for the PGA Tour starting in 1971, Dent made the cut in 296 of 450 tour events, including 25 top-10 finishes, and earned $565,809 in official money in a different era for tournament purses. He was runner-up once, to Jack Nicklaus at the 1972 Walt Disney World Open Invitational in Dent's second year on tour. Dent made the cut in six of 11 majors that he played (six at the PGA Championship, five at the U.S. Open). The World Long Driving Champion in 1974 and 1975, Dent also won the Florida PGA Championship three straight years beginning in 1976, as well as the PGA Tour's Tournament Player Series event in 1983 in Chattanooga, Tenn. Dent successfully transitioned in 1989 to the senior tour for age 50 and older, with 131 top-10 finishes and 535 of 545 cuts made. He earned over $9 million in official money. His first of 12 victories was the 1989 MONY Syracuse Senior Classic -- where runner-up Al Geiberger joked after losing by one shot, "Jim Dent ought to be outlawed (for) the way he can hit the ball." Dent won again the same year at the Newport Cup. His last victory on the senior tour was the 1997 Home Depot Invitational at Quail Hollow. He was inducted into the Caddie Hall of Fame and the African-American Golfers Hall of Fame. The road leading into "The Patch" was renamed Jim Dent Way. His son, Jim Dent Jr., is the head golf pro there. Augusta National plans to continue renovation of "The Patch," including a redesign of the main 18-hole course and a new, nine-hole, par-3 course through a partnership with Tiger Woods' design company, TGR. --Field Level Media
Chicago Tribune
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: ‘Rise Above' is about the surprisingly upbeat life of a Masters caddie for more than 50 years
To help support his family, a tiny 11-year-old named Carl Jackson took a walk. He walked from the scraggly neighborhood where he lived with his parents and eight siblings in a rural town named Sand Hills in Georgia to the pristine greenery next door. The little boy had dropped out of school and was looking for a job, which he found after walking through a fence that bordered the famous Augusta National Golf Club where the Masters Tournament is annually held, this year's beginning on April 10. He became a caddie, and that is what he would proudly be for the next 54 years. It's been some journey, usually with a heavy golf bag on his shoulders, and it has brought him a decent living, a stable family, many encounters with wealthy golfers and talented professionals and some powerful mentors and friends, including golfer Ben Crenshaw, whose bag he carried to two Masters titles (1984 and 1995), and induction into the Caddie Hall of Fame. Now, nearing 80, he is a movie star, the compelling center of a tender and inspiring documentary available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ titled 'Rise Above: The Carl Jackson Story.' It has been a hit on the festival circuit, a 10-time official selection in international fests. It won for best feature documentary at the Cannes Indie International Film Festival last year. 'I appreciate all of that. It is touching people, and not only festival judges. I think people are impressed, even amazed that Carl has never forgotten his humble beginnings,' says the movie's director, producer and writer, whose name is Maryilene Blondell, who lives on Chicago's North Side. Before becoming involved with Jackson and his story, she knew little about golf, her experience limited to a teenage visit to watch one round of the Masters years ago. But she knew journalism and television. And she knew people and knew a good story. 'Carl is so genuine and sincere,' Blondell says. 'There wasn't any person I asked to be in this film — Gary Player, Scottie Scheffler — who turned me down.' Raised in Glenview, she studied journalism in college, became a New York-based network television news producer and freelance writer, moved to Los Angeles where she produced sports and entertainment programs, worked in the nonprofit world, came back to the Chicago area where she co-founded a production company and has started to dip her creative feet into features films, including with 'The Road Dance.' She has two adult sons and a daughter still in high school. She met Jackson through a friend who knew Carl's brother. Carl had signed an entertainment contract for an independent production company to make a feature starring Denzel Washington. Big talk, typical of dreamy deal makers. 'I helped him get out of that deal and we kept in touch,' says Blondell. A couple of years later and a handful of Hollywood's empty promises, Carl told Blondell that he was ready to tell his story. 'And he asked me to do it.' That she has done and it has been quite a learning experience, more about how to live a life than how to read a green. 'We got a lot of help,' says Blondell, who tells of a Chicago financier named Paul Purcell. He called out of the blue and said, 'I hear you're making a documentary about my friend Mr. Jackson. If he says he believes in you, I believe in you. What do you need?' Blondell tells me, 'There would not be a 'Rise Above' without Paul Purcell.' And so you'll watch and learn the rather amazing story of Jackson's friendship with Augusta member and former club chairman Jack Stephens, an oilman and investment banker, philanthropist and Arkansas resident. He employed Jackson not only on the golf course, but as a jack-of-many-trades personal assistant and confidant, and Jackson moved with his wife and increasing number of children to spend part of each year in Little Rock, where Stephen lived. When Stephen invited Jackson to play Augusta as his guest, he became the first Black nonprofessional to play the course and the first to stay in one of Augusta's 12 guest cabins. There are, of course, other stories that could be told about the Masters. 'I know that if anyone had reason to be filled with rage and anger over racism and poverty, it was Carl,' Blondell says. The Masters did not invite a Black competitor to play until 1975, when Lee Elder broke the color barrier. Augusta, which is secretive about its membership roster, didn't admit its first Black member until 1990. 'Carl and I were determined to tell an inspiring story that might bring people together rather than tear them apart,' Blondell says. In any case, caddies are likely due for extinction. In many parts of the U.S., caddies have gone the way of bowling-alley pin setters, available at less than 10% of the country's 15,000 golf courses. Jackson retired in 2015. What has steadily diminished their number and threatens, some would say, their very existence, is the golf cart As I have written, 'If the most aggressive assault on the status of caddies is technological, the other is more subtle and psychological. Most golfers stink — an oft-cited statistic has it that 70% of golfers can't manage to shoot below 100 — and who wants a stranger observing their ineptitude?
