PGA legend and HBCU trailblazer, dies at 85

“Big Boy”

Never was a nickname more worthy than the one given to PGA legend Jim Dent. He was a large man at 6ft 3in and 224lb, yet he also was one of the longest drivers in the game. Not to mention the weight he carried from a game that tried to keep him from what he loved.

Before Tiger Woods, there was Jim Dent—a man who didn’t just play golf, he powered through it. With drives that could split the sky and a story that cut through America’s deepest racial divides, Dent’s legacy is not just measured in yardage or wins, but in the doors he opened for Black athletes in a game that long refused them entry.

Dent, who passed away at 85 in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia, was one of the few Black golfers on the PGA Tour during a time when golf was still shaking off its segregationist past. Born into poverty in 1939, Dent learned the game as a caddie at the Augusta Country Club and the Augusta Municipal Golf Course—places where he once couldn’t play. Despite early losses, he never stopped grinding. “I got better each year,” he told the USGA.

He didn’t win on the PGA Tour, but his mark was made on the senior circuit, the PGA Champions Tour, where he won 12 titles between 1989 and 1998 and earned over $9 million. In 1974, he won a PGA driving contest with a jaw-dropping 324-yard shot—outdriving nearly every pro in the sport. Later, Callaway honored him with a signature Big Bertha driver.