The world's most famous mediocre golfer

The PGA Tour is basically a week-in and week-out proposition with 48 tournaments held throughout the year. Based on the time of the year and the amount of sunlight, anywhere from 120156 golfers tee it up weekly in a PGA Tour tournament. Sometimes there are two tournaments during the week as in the case of the British Open in midJuly while the Barracuda Championship is being contested in Truckee at the same time.

Fans of golf can immediately recognize the stars of the game such as Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, and Rory McIlroy. Yet as readily identifiable as those linksters may be, there are a whole lot of other golfers who couldn't be picked out of a lineup. I'm talking about millionaire professional golfers such as Justin Lower, Ben Griffin, and Erik Barnes among others. Scores of those types of golfers have a career on the PGA Tour even though they seldom win. Then again, a 10th place finish at last week's Players Championship was worth slightly more than $750,000. Mediocrity can pay big dividends.

Joel Dahmen is one of those golfers. In fact he calls himself the most famous mediocre golfer in the world. I follow some of the tour's “bubble boys” such as Kurt Kitayama, James Hahn, Cameron Champ, and Nick Watney, all of whom grew up in Northern California. Yet after the past two seasons, I do know that my favorite “middle of the pack” golfer in the world of professional golf nowadays is Joel Dahmen.

Dahmen got some degree of national attention in February of 2023 when he took off his shirt on the 16th green at the Phoenix Open and twirled it about with beer raining down from the loud and boisterous gallery at golf's favorite party hole. Dahmen and his playing partners got fined for their colorful display. The following month, NetFlix started showing “Full Swing,' their behind the scenes look at life on the PGA Tour. While many of the shows on the eight part series featured the likes of Spieth or Thomas, there was a segment on Joel Dahmen that was nothing short of hilarious. Dahmen and his caddie, childhood friend Geno Bonnalie, spent the majority of the segment arguing about Joel's lack of passion for the game and his willingness to state that “someone's got to be the 80th best golfer in the world and I'm good with that.” The Joel Dahmen segment ends on a high note with him holding the midpoint lead in the 2022 United States Open and ultimately finishing in the top ten. Anyone who saw that segment definitely knew who the 80th best golfer in the world happened to be.

Year Two of “Full Swing” returned to the airwaves earlier this month on March 6th and Dalmen returns to prominence in the third edition, a fascinating dichotomy profile of Joel and Wyndham Clark. Dahmen is adamant about refusing to get some much needed (according to his caddie Geno Bonnalie) help from a sports psychologist. Clark, who still carries the weight of his mother's death from cancer at a relatively young age, goes the other route and seeks professional help. The end result is Clark winning the U.S. Open last June at the Los Angeles Country Club while Geno spends the end of the segment demanding that Dahmen “stop quitting” on himself. Bonnalie wants him to start to get his act in gear.

This past weekend at the Players Championship at the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, Dahmen opened up with a 74 but then got some wind in his sails as he shot rounds of 67-67-68 to finish in a tie for 11th place. So how good is a finish like 11th place at one of golf's big money tournaments? Amazingly Dah

men pocketed $606,250 for his efforts. Mediocrity is profitable.

So who exactly is Joel Dahmen, a golfer with a limited pedigree. He was born in Clarkston, Washington, a town of 7,000 on the Idaho border across the Snake River from Lewiston, Idaho. It snows in Clarkston, so Joel didn't exactly have a 12 month golf season growing up. Yet he did have success as a junior golfer, twice winning the Washington high school state championship. One of the older kids on the team who took the somewhat scattered Dahmen under his wings was upper classman, Geno Bonnalie, his future caddie.

Dahmen parlayed his success in high school golf and played one year of collegiate golf at the University of Washington. He only lasted there for one year and then decided to turn pro as a 22 year old in 2010. Joel bounced around for four years on the Canadian Tour while spending his winters in Arizona on the Gateway Tour. He won twice on the Gateway in 2012 and once in 2013. Joel had a break-out season on the Canadian Tour in 2014, winning twice and finishing atop the circuit's Order of Merit standings. That got him a promotion to the Buy.com Tour, nowadays called the Korn Ferry Tour. It's basically the AAA version of professional golf.

In his second year on the Buy.com Tour, Dahmen had enough top five finishes to end up in 25th place on the money list. He made top 25 by a $975 margin. The top 25 receive PGA Tour cards. Suddenly and unexpectedly

Joel was off to the big show for the 2016-17 wrap-around season. His first year on tour was a relatively unsuccessful eye-opener as he came in 179th place, but a return to the Buy.com qualifying tournament got him a 24th place finish and a return to the PGA Tour the following year. He started having some success, coming in second place at the 2020 Wells Fargo Championship in North Carolina and then winning the Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic in March of 2021, defeating Sam Ryder by one shot.

Although he is simply the most mediocre golfer in the world, Joel Dalmen has a lot to live for. He and his wife celebrated the birth of his son last year. Nowadays he gets invited to all sorts of celebrity and charity proams namely because he's Joel Dalmen. True he is 146th in the official world golf rankings and finds himself in 83rd place on the PGA Tour's Fed Ex Cup standings. That all makes sense for someone who has played in 187 tour events and made 125 cuts with a bunch of finishes below 50th place. Yet on the big money

PGA Tour, our favorite journeyman has already made $11.75 million in earnings over seven seasons.

This past weekend, Joel Dahmen admitted to the press that he has begun seeing a “mental coach” for the past few months. I doubt if we'll ever see him lifting a Wannamaker Trophy or a Claret Jug as a result but I do know that in the world of the PGA Tour, Joel Dahmen is a breath of fresh air. What more would you expect from the world's most famous mediocre golfer?