Montauk Golf Pro Paul Dickinson Qualifies To Play In PGA Championship

Montauk golf pro Paul Dickinson this week credited his years of playing golf in winter on Long Island with helping him land a spot in the PGA Championship, one of professional golf’s four exalted “majors” tournaments, next month.

Going into the last round of the four-day PGA Professionals Championship tournament in Austin, Texas, last week, Dickinson was several strokes behind the last of the top 20 players who would qualify to play in the PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May.

But on the final day of the tournament, Mother Nature got in his corner.

“On the last day, the wind really picked up — and a lot of guys went backward,” Dickinson recalled on Friday at his home in Montauk. “Playing out here in the wintertime, it’s very similar, and 30 to 40 degrees colder. So the wind didn’t affect me that much.” He added, “I passed, like, 25 guys.”

Dickinson, 45, was one of just five of the 80 players — all PGA club professionals who work as instructors and manage the pro shops at golf clubs around the country — to shoot under par on that windy final day. He finished tied for 18th, which landed him in a four-man playoff for the last three slots in the PGA Championship.

After one of the other players posted a bogey on the first hole, Dickinson was left with a short putt for par to stamp his ticket on the “Team of 20,” as the 20 PGA pros who qualify for the PGA Championship each year are known.

“Two of us had 2-to-3-footers for par, and we knew if we made them, we were in,” Dickinson recounted. “When I made mine, and I was going to pick it out of the hole, and I was watching it roll around in the bottom of the cup, all I could think about was: I’m going to a major championship. If you’re a golfer, that’s been your dream since you were a kid. It was extremely exhilarating.”

It has been a long road to one of the highest peaks in golf.

Dickinson grew up in Texas, but his family has deep roots in Montauk — he and his wife, Nicole, and sons Carter and Jack, now live in a house built by his great-grandparents.

Spending his summers in Montauk, golf became his passion in his early teens while working at Montauk Downs collecting golf balls off the driving range.

He excelled at the game through high school in Texas and eventually earned a spot on a Division 1 golf team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he was an All-American. Throughout, he continued to return to his grandparents house in Montauk every summer, working at Montauk Downs and playing in the tournaments put on by the Metropolitan PGA, the PGA of America’s regional chapter.

He then spent 10 years “chasing” a spot on the professional competitive tours. He qualified for a PGA Tour tournament, the Kemper Open, in 2001, and earned a spot on the Korn Ferry Tour — the golf equivalent of AAA minor league baseball — for one season in 2007.

But with a growing family, Dickinson eventually put the lofty dream of being a competitive tour golfer back in the bag, exchanging it for the more stable and attainable career as a golf club professional.

While in college and playing in Met PGA tournaments he had met another golfer named Rick Hartmann, the longtime pro at Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton. When Dickinson graduated from college, Hartmann offered him a job at Atlantic. But at the time, the dream of being a tour player beckoned.

“He said, ‘Paul, why don’t you come work for me?’ and I said, ‘Rick, I’m going to the PGA Tour — so, thanks but no thanks,’” Dickinson recalled with a laugh. “Ten years later, I’m moving back up here and I called him and asked, ‘Do you have a spot?’ And he said, ‘Paul, you shoulda taken the job when I offered it to you!’”

Dickinson instead landed where he’d started: at Montauk Downs. He spent five years working under former pro Kevin Smith, giving lessons and helping manage the golf shop. But Hartmann eventually came calling again, and Dickinson has worked as his assistant at Atlantic for 10 years now.

The dream of playing on “the tour” has faded over the years but never really died. He has continued to play in the Met PGA qualifiers for the U.S. Open and PGA Championship over the years. There have been close calls, but an invite to the big time had never come — until this week.

With him through the ups and downs has been his caddy, Jack Miller, who works part time at Bethpage State Park’s legendary Black Course. Miller just happened to be driving cross country in his RV when Dickinson was headed to last week’s tournament in Austin and jaunted over to carry the bag for his longtime friend — a detour in his journey back east that will now be extended to a stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Dickinson, however, is back home. On Friday, he was headed to Miller Place to watch his sons play baseball for the East Hampton Bonackers. This week, he’ll head back to work at Atlantic for the season, with the anticipation of a career high point lurking just over the horizon. There will be little time for the extensive practice many tour players dedicate to preparing for such tournaments.

“We open at Atlantic next Friday,” he said. “So I’ll be hanging around up there over the next few weeks working, teaching lessons and helping with the staff. And I’ll try to squeeze in a little time for practice and, hopefully, I can keep doing what I’m doing.”

The first two rounds of the PGA Championship, which all players play in, will be held on Thursday and Friday, May 19 and 20, and will be televised on the Golf Channel from 3 to 7 p.m.

At the end of the day on Friday, the field will be cut to just the top 70 players, who will play on Saturday and Sunday for a chance to win the trophy on national television that Sunday.

Dickinson doesn’t even utter a whisper about hoping to hoist a trophy, opting for more modest aspirations. East Hampton’s baseball success means that his sons will not be able to come watch him play the tournament. But he hopes that he’ll have at least a small cheering section if things go right.

“Jack and Carter can’t make it, because they’re going to make the playoffs — so as much as we want to go as a family, I think it’s more important for them to be on the field with Bonac baseball,” Dickinson said proudly. “And, hopefully, if things go well, my wife will be able to come out for the weekend.”