There are those days when your love and passion for golf is validated and all your feelings and emotions about the inherent beauty of the game are supported in a most serendipitous manner.
A phone conversation with Jeff Dickson, for instance.
“Call him,” said acquaintances, assuring me that Jeff had stumbled upon the secret of the game in a most haphazard way. “It’s crazy fun.”
Turns out, these acquaintances were spot on, though they undersold the story a wee bit. Jeff Dickson’s golf saga is beyond “crazy fun.” His story not only hits on the essence of how we measure our worth; it captures the spirit of golf that too many people miss.
That he does it by carrying a bag with six drivers of different lofts and varying shaft lengths indeed gets to the heart of his story. That he is quick to dispel any thoughts people may have about him mocking the game with some sort of gimmick is important to note. “I love golf. I have a passion for it and respect its greatness,” said Dickson.
It's just that in another part of his life when he was younger and misdirected on how to squeeze joy out of golf, Jeff Dickson – he of the boyhood background in hockey and lacrosse, the other stick and ball games – actually tossed down a lot of good rounds.
Though he was never “classically trained in golf” Jeff Dickson was smart and a hard worker. So “around 2001 I got to a 7 handicap. I was in grad school (at MIT; undergrad was Babson College) and I figured, ‘Hey, I’ve arrived.’ So of course I switched to blades and started to try and shape my shots.”
Yep. Warning lights flipped on.
“One day I shot 42 on the front, 64 on the back. I went from a 7 to 17 in six months. I was a wreck. My right hand used to shake. I was regressing so quickly.”
Add it all up and the sentiment was what you would have expected. “I hated the game,” said Jeff Dickson, an executive managing director with PGIM Private Capital who splits his time between Monterey Peninsula and Nantucket.
There are layers of golf that don’t represent the innate beauty of the game. To many, it’s all about the almighty score. There are those who live for single-digit handicaps they cannot possibly play to. Others only post scores from higher-sloped courses so they can bring higher handicaps to tournaments at lower-sloped courses. Fun gets mistakenly measured by a series of net pars, C and D flite trophies, and how many strokes you can get.
His place in the golf world, said Jeff Dickson, “was a mess,” until he read something in a book that hit a nerve. “It was something like this, ‘Why do you play the game? Is it the score?’
“All of a sudden it stuck with me. So I decided I was going to keep playing because I love golf so much, but there were going to be two rules. One, never get angry. And two, be a fun person to play with.”
Playing one day with fellow members at Monterey Peninsula CC, Jeff Dickson focused not on the score and how far his shots went; rather, he fell in love with making solid contact with his driver and watching balls run along firm turn. He added a few other drivers with more loft and would use them on shorter shots, basically putting from 20 and 30 yards out.
“It opened my eyes,” he said. “It was fun. I felt immune to all the things that upset golfers.”
All lined up and ready for fun -- Captain America, Jumping Jack Flash, Brown Sugar, The Criminal, The Teether, and Babyface.
Having played hockey while growing up in Framingham, Mass., Dickson knew how to hit a slapshot. So he adopted a “Happy Gilmore” stance, set up for a big cut, and could hit a soft slapper with a high-lofted driver to short par 3s like No. 7 at Pebble Beach, which measures in the neighborhood of 100 yards.
When the Director of Golf at MPCC, Scott Kirkwood, told him of the driver his 9-year-old son carried – a 15-degree clubface was affixed to a 9-iron length shaft – Jeff Dickson added it to his bag for an overseas trip. “I called Scott from Scotland and told him his son wasn’t getting the club back,” laughed Dickson.
(Relax, the young man got a new driver.)
The driver from the young Kirkwood lad was called Babyface. His other drivers got names, too – Captain America, Jumping Jack Flash, Brown Sugar, The Criminal, and The Teether. With these varied lofts, Jeff Dickson could shape an array of shots that also inherited names. There was the Bunt Cut, the Slither Cut, the Ground Sweeper Draw, the Power Fade (on a personal note, it brings a smile to my face to pen that), and the Banana Slice.
Jeff Dickson became sort of a folk hero with his friends at MPCC and Old Memorial in Tampa, Fla, and others who shared trips with him to destinations like Pine Valley and overseas to Ireland and Scotland. Links, of course, was prime-time for Dickson and his unique bag of fun.
“The Teether,” in fact, was gifted to Dickson on a trip to St. Andrews. “Simon, a caddie at the Old Course, presented me with The Teether on bended knee at the first tee. It’s 11 ½ degrees and he cut the shaft to 5-wood length. ‘When you need comfort from the fairway,’ he said, ‘call upon The Teether,’ he said.”
“Adding new drivers is often a delicate negotiation at home with my wife,” Dickson laughed. But in Denise, Jeff Dickson has a golf companion extraordinaire. “I call her ‘Doc’ (because) she has the cure for what ails me.”
Golf provides a boundless amount of joy, but remember, this is no circus act. Jeff Dickson can navigate golf courses with profound deft and guile, usually using six drivers, a wedge when needed to extract himself from precarious positions, maybe another iron, and a putter for the short ones. (“I tend to putt with a driver outside of 6 feet,” he said.)
Along the way, numbers offer testimony to his great feel and impressive commitment. Start with the fact that he’s an 11.8 index. Consider he shot 81 on a Christmas Day at Pebble Beach, using 70 of those strokes with his drivers. His personal best – “during the driver era,” he notes – is 73 at Old Macdonald at Bandon Dunes.
At the Old Course, Dickson once finished his round with par using four different drivers at the Road Hole 17th, then he made birdie at 18 using three different drivers.
A caddie at Pine Valley looked incredulous once day, wondering “why would he be put onto a six-driver bag,” Jeff Dickson laughed. That day Jeff birdied the par-5 15th using four drivers and the caddie was a believer. “Mr. Dickson,” he said, “I would travel to caddie for you.”
Mind you, as much happiness as Jeff Dickson has on the golf course with his drivers, eclectic persona, and aversion to ego-powered goals – “I’m happier playing this way; people see straight lines, I see arcs and curves” – he still draws curious looks.
“I have a friend who has 2 PhDs but he can’t get his mind around my game,” laughed Dickson, whose main driver on tee shots is 8 degrees. “But I’m happier playing this way. I love golf, I love it so much.”
Chuckle, if you will. Or better still, try this: Commit to finding more joy in the game as did Jeff Dickson. Goodness knows, it might be needed.
