Jim Dent, Long-Driving Golfer, Dies at 85

Jim Dent, who was one of the few black golfers in the PGA Tour, in his day or now, and that became known for his prodigious protesters on the shirt, died Friday at his home in Augusta, Go. He was 85 years old.

His grandson Andre Lacey II said the cause were the complications of a recently stroke.

Mr. Dent was part of a small group or important black golfers that preceded Tiger Woods (which is identified as partially black) in professional golf. Charlie Sfford was the first to play in what was known as the PGA Tour after her former father, the PGA of America, eliminated her “Caucasian only” policy in 1961.

In 1964, Pete Brown was the first black golfer to win an event on the tour. Eleven years later, Lee Elder was the first to play in the Masters tournament. And Calvin Peete, another black member of the tour, his first tournament won in 1979 and 11 more between 1982 and 1986.

Dent accumulated $ 564,809 in earnings, but never won a tournament on the tour, and did not describe to play in the Masters. His best end came in 1972, when he tied in second place, nine blows behind Jack Nicklaus, at the Walt Disney World Open invitational in Florida.

But Dent won a box tournament in the new senior circuit of the tour (now called PGA Tour Champions), which he joined in 1989 at 50 years. He won two tournaments in 1989 and four the following year. His last victory arrived in 1998. In total, Oye won more than $ 9 million in the Champions tour.

Laury Livsey, historian of the PGA tour, said Dent was not considered a racial pioneer; Rather, the accredited Sfford, Brown and Elder with that distinction.

“But Dent was a player, like Sofford, Brown and Elder, who gravitated towards a game that was not traditional for black players,” Livsey wrote in an email. “He had no advantages growing and was really a self -taught player, one who learned the game by observing what he saw through caddying.”

Golf was a segregated sport when Dent was growing in Augusta, a city known as the Masters Tournament Home in the Augusta National Golf Club. But I wasn’t fascinated by that. He is playing playing in the Augusta courses that were open to the black golfers, and stayed in the Augusta Country Club and the municipal golf course of Augusta, called The Patch.

He also begged the caddying in the Masters in 1956 and anyone took the bags of professionals such as Bob Rosburg and Bob Goalby. Augusta National would not accept a black member until 1990.

Caddying allowed Dent to study the changes of the best players, including Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead.

“My goal was to see them play,” he told the United States Golf Association website in 2012, “but I didn’t know what a golf swing was.”

He continued studying and improving his game, graduating on a tour for black players. After failing in his attempts to qualify for the PGA Tour, finally successful in 1970, at 31, an advanced age to join it.

“It was the show!” Dent told the USGA. “I learned when you go out with those guys, you have to produce. You just don’t want to be happy.”

He added: “I improved every year.”

Dent, which put 6 feet 3 inches and weighed around 225 pounds, improved its reputation of great length of the TEE by winning a driving contest in 1974, sponsored by the magazine PGA Tour and Golf Digest, with an explosion that was 324 yards and 18 inres.

After that victory, he explained his techniques to the New York Times in an article under the headline “How to conduct a golf dance party: look at Jim Dent.”

“I don’t hit much until I’m entering the ball,” he said. “If you start too fast, you are dead. You will jump from your shoes and you will have nothing to show. I take the driver back as slow as iron 9. I simply dragged it back.”

The following year, when the contest expanded and became known as the National Driving Long Championship, the first finished, with an impulse of only 317 yards. The year after that, he finished fourth, when he drove 292 yards and five inches.

Dent capitalized his long data skill when he became one of the first PGA Tour professionals to sign an agreement with the Golf Callaway company to support his great Bertha line or large drivers. In 1992, a newspaper announcement boasted that a great Bertha model had increased its average driving distance to 276.8 yards and another to 286.4 yards, the longest on the senior tour and more than any person on the tours of PGA Tour. Later, Callaway created the great limited edition driver Bertha Jim Dent.

James Lacey Dent was born on May 9, 1939 in Augusta de Tom and Carrie Dent. His mother died when Jim was 6 years old. His father, who led a pulp truck and owned cultivation lands, died when Jim was 12 years old. Jim and three of his brothers were raised by an aunt, Mary Benton, who worked as a keys.

She was not a fan of her caddying.

“The first time Caddi, I got a whuppin,” Dent told USA Today in 1990. “She said if I stayed with the caddies, I would learn to bet and drink.”

Dent attended Paine College, a historically black school in Augusta, where he played football with a scholarship, but left after a year to follow the golf. He got money waiting for tables at a restaurant near Atlantic City, NJ, and played in tournament organized by United Golfers Association, a tour for black golfers.

Dent left the Champions tour in 2010, but just when he retired, he could still reach long units.

“He was still putting it out there, from 230 to 250 yards, until he had the stroke,” said his grandson Andre Lacey in an interview.

The three dent matrities ended in divorce. In addition to his grandson Andre, the male and female golf coach in Paine College, Dent is survived by a daughter, Charlene Dent Wilkins, his marriage to Evelyn Green; A daughter, Radiah Dent, and a son, James, of his marriage to Brenda Dent; A daughter, Victoria Dent, and two children, Joshua and Joseph, all of whom he adopted his third marriage, with Wilye Malvaoux; A sister, Josephine Dent; Other eight grandchildren; 10 great -grandfather; and two great -grandchildren.

In 2020, the city of Augusta renamed the road that leads to the municipal golf course of Augusta Jim Dent Way.

“He was really grateful,” said his grandson. “It is a place where he could not play,” Dent Caddied in the course long before it was integrated in 1964, “so now is a place that bears his name.”