Jim Dent, who was one of the few Black golfers on the PGA Tour — in his day or now — and who became known for his prodigious drives off the tee, died on Friday at his home in Augusta, Ga. He was 85.
His grandson Andre Lacey II said the cause was complications of a recent stroke.
Mr. Dent was part of a small group of significant Black golfers who preceded Tiger Woods (who identifies as partly Black) into professional golf. Charlie Sifford was the first to play on what became known as the PGA Tour after its former parent, the PGA of America, dropped its “Caucasians 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, won his first tournament in 1979 and 11 more between 1982 and 1986.
Dent accumulated $564,809 in earnings, but he never won a tournament on the tour, and he did not qualify to play in the Masters. His best finish came in 1972, when he tied for second place, nine strokes behind Jack Nicklaus, at the Walt Disney World Open Invitational in Florida.
But Dent went on to win a dozen tournaments on the tour’s new senior circuit (now called PGA Tour Champions), which he joined in 1989 at age 50. He won two tournaments in 1989 and four more the next year. His last victory came in 1998. In all, he earned more than $9 million on the Champions tour.
Laury Livsey, the PGA Tour’s historian, said that Dent did not regard himself as a racial pioneer; rather, he credited Sifford, Brown and Elder with that distinction.
“But Dent was a player, like Sifford, Brown and Elder, who gravitated toward a game that was not a traditional one for Black players to pursue,” Livsey wrote in an email. “He had no advantages growing up 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 up in Augusta, a city known as the home of the Masters tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. But he was nonetheless fascinated by it. He began playing on Augusta courses that were open to Black golfers, and he caddied at the Augusta Country Club and Augusta Municipal Golf Course, called the Patch.
He also began caddying at the Masters in 1956 and eventually carried the bags of pros like Bob Rosburg and Bob Goalby. Augusta National would not accept a Black member until 1990.
Caddying enabled Dent to study the swings of the best players, including Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead.
“My aim was to watch them play,” he told the United States Golf Association’s website in 2012, “but I didn’t know what a golf swing was all about.”
He continued to study and improve his game, graduating to a tour for Black players. After failing in his attempts to qualify for the PGA Tour, he finally succeeded in 1970, at 31, an advanced age at which to join it.
“It was the show!” Dent told the U.S.GA. “I learned when you get out there with those guys, you got to produce. You just don’t want to be happy out there.”
He added, “I got better each year.”
Dent, who stood 6-foot-3 and weighed about 225 pounds, enhanced his reputation for great length off the tee by winning a driving contest in 1974, sponsored by the PGA Tour and Golf Digest magazine, with a blast that went 324 yards and 18 inches.
After that victory, he explained his techniques to The New York Times in an article under the headline “How to Drive a Golf Ball Farther: Watch Jim Dent.”
“I don’t hit hard until I’m coming into the ball,” he said. “If you start too fast, you’re dead. You’ll jump out of your shoes and have nothing to show for it. I take the driver back as slow as the 9 iron. I just creep it back.”
The next year, when the contest expanded and became known as the National Long Driving Championships, he finished first, with a drive of just over 317 yards. The year after that, he finished fourth, when he drove 292 yards and five inches.
Dent capitalized on his long-hitting prowess when he became one of the first PGA Tour pros to sign a deal with the Callaway Golf Company to endorse its Big Bertha line of oversize drivers. In 1992, a newspaper ad boasted that one Big Bertha model had increased his average drive distance to 276.8 yards and another to 286.4 yards, the longest on the senior tour and more than that of anyone on the PGA Tour other than John Daly’s 288.9 yards. Callaway later created the limited-edition Big Bertha Jim Dent driver.
James Lacey Dent was born on May 9, 1939, in Augusta to Tom and Carrie Dent. His mother died when Jim was 6. His father, who drove a pulpwood truck and owned farmland, died when Jim was 12. Jim and three of his siblings were then raised by an aunt, Mary Benton, who worked as a housekeeper.
She was not a fan of his caddying.
“The first time I caddied, I got a whuppin’,” Dent told USA Today in 1990. “She said if I hung around with caddies, I’d learn how to gamble and drink.”
Dent attended Paine College, a historically Black school in Augusta, where he played football on a scholarship, but he left after a year to pursue golf. He earned money by waiting tables at a restaurant near Atlantic City, N.J., and played in tournaments organized by the United Golfers Association, a tour for Black golfers.
Dent left the Champions Tour in 2010, but even in retirement he could still hit long drives.
“He was still putting it out there, 230 to 250 yards, until he had the stroke,” his grandson Andre Lacey said in an interview.
Dent’s three marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his grandson Andre, the men’s and women’s golf coach at Paine College, Dent is survived by a daughter, Charlene Dent Wilkins, from his marriage to Evelyn Green; a daughter, Radiah Dent, and a son, James, from his marriage to Brenda Dent; a daughter, Victoria Dent, and two sons, Joshua and Joseph, all of whom he adopted during his third marriage, to Willye Malvaoux; a sister, Josephine Dent; eight other grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.
In 2020, the city of Augusta renamed the road leading to Augusta Municipal Golf Course Jim Dent Way.
“He was just really grateful,” his grandson said. “It’s a place where he once couldn’t play’’ — Dent caddied at the course well before it integrated in 1964 — “so now it’s a place that bears his name.”