‘You can’t let go’: How a Myrtle Beach resident surpassed goal of 367 golf rounds in 2020
Jimmy Dean is a man of routines.
The 75-year-old Myrtle Beach resident exercises every morning, and says he has for multiple years totaling thousands of consecutive days.
This past year he set out to read the entire Bible, outlined how he was going to do it and stuck to the script, and scripture. It’s not the first time he accomplished that feat.
“I have certain things I do,” Dean said. “I’m one of those guys if you were a hit man I’d be very easy to get because I do the same thing over and over and over again. I’m kind of like a routine guy.”
But in 2020, Dean became obsessed with an undertaking that seemed unrealistic even for his compulsive nature.
The member of Pine Lakes Country Club set out to average more than an 18-hole round of golf per day for the year, and he actually hit the mark in early December with his 367th round. It was a leap year so there were 366 days in 2020. He finished the year with 376 rounds played.
“Once you get into it you just can’t let go of it,” Dean said. “At my age, the biggest thing I wanted to do was complete it, so if I dropped dead the next day at least I did what I said I was going to do.”
Dean would have added more rounds late in the year but he tested positive for the coronavirus on Dec. 22 and his last round was on Dec. 19. He has had a mild case of the virus and hopes to next play on Jan. 5 if he tests negative beforehand.
“I have never been overly sick, the real pain is being cooped up,” Dean said.
A goal is born
Dean has become a golf junkie in Myrtle Beach.
The Pittsburgh native moved to the area in 1991 after buying a small motel and convenience store with his wife, April, called the Sunset Inn, which he owned and operated until 2000 and leased to another operator until 2005.
What has he done since then? “Play golf,” Dean said. “I’ve played a lot of golf.”
In 2001 he became a member at Arcadian Shores Golf Club and bought a golf cart cover and heater, and he played 320 rounds that year despite not playing more than 18 holes per day. “I’d be out there a lot by myself. It was just nice. You can kind of relax from having a job,” he said.
He has regularly been playing 270 to 280 rounds per year for the past several years, and played a lot of golf this past January and February because it was a mild and largely dry winter, often playing 36 holes and a couple times playing 45 in one day.
When the coronavirus arrived in March he applied to fill in as a substitute teacher, which he had done earlier in life, but was not accepted.
“After that I thought, ‘Gee, what am I going to do?’ Well the days were nice and everybody got their own carts and you could play really fast,” he said.
“I keep it on the calendar and once I got to maybe May or June, my wife said, ‘You play golf almost every day, and some days you’re playing twice.’ That’s when I started figuring out, ‘You know what, I’m going to see if I can do 321.’ Once I figured I was going to get there easily, I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to see if I can do one day more than there are days in the year.”
Between May and October, Dean played approximately 40 rounds per month, and that generally included a day off per week, usually a Tuesday. So he had to play 36 holes per day about 14 days per month. To keep his pace, he had to play in inclement weather.
“After a while I don’t think there is such a thing as an impossible day to play golf,” Dean said with a hearty laugh. “I played in the rain, I played in two tornado warnings, and I played in a hurricane warning. We were dedicated to getting the rounds in.
“The craziest ones would always be when it rained real hard. Many times I was the only person out there.”
The achievement
Dean’s body held up incredibly well to the endeavor, and he believes his dedicated exercise regimen played a large role. He has an exercise bike at his home.
“The most amazing thing to me was I went through this whole thing and never got hurt,” Dean said. “I never had to take an aspirin, never had to take an Aleve or anything like that. I think it was kind of like a brick layer, you know, you keep doing it all the time and finally toward the end you don’t even get tired from doing it. It’s almost like a job, you’re going, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get up and go to work today.’ ”
That mentality allowed him to push through days when he wasn’t excited about playing another round.
“There were times I certainly wouldn’t have [played] if I wasn’t trying to get this [mark],” he said. “I wouldn’t have been that stupid to keep going out. But it’s like one of those things you can’t let go.”
His wife may be one of the few people who isn’t surprised he played nearly 400 rounds of golf in 2020. “I think my wife has been with me long enough to know this is something I’d be stupid enough to do,” he quipped.
His handicap has gone up from a 9.5 to a 10.5 with the marathon year of golf. “I think playing in weather I wouldn’t usually play in and just losing distance as I get older, but mostly lack of talent,” he joked.
Despite catching COVID-19 and its presence throughout most of the year, Dean considers 2020 to be possibly the second best year of his life because of his accomplishments. “It sounds crazy with all this stuff going on, but I was in this little bubble over here,” he said.
It’s second only to 1965 when he was enlisted in the Navy and was involved in bringing troops to the first military landing in Vietnam. “That was something special to me and still is to this day,” Dean said.
Golf was one of the few things that remained a consistent activity in South Carolina that wasn’t limited by the state government, and because the virus deterred travel by visiting golfers, courses during the spring and fall golf seasons weren’t overrun by tourists as they normally are.
“Personally it was terrific because we got to play at really the nicest times of the year,” Dean said.
Finding an obsession
What about golf has drawn Dean to it?
“The amazing thing about golf is every shot is a new adventure, and in a day’s worth you make two or three good ones. That’s kind of what will make a day for you,” Dean said.
He enjoys the comradeship of playing with other golfers, but he has also found he enjoys what the game provides to a single player, including playing more at your own pace, practicing during a round and multi-tasking, which in his case includes dabbling in the stock market during the day, which he is want to do.
“Usually you run into somebody that’s fun to play with,” he said. “For me, I had not played golf by myself before I came down here. It was nice for me. You’d be out there by yourself and you could think real clearly, and you’ve got a phone so you can make all kinds of things like [stock trades]. And if you have trouble putting like I always do you can sit there and putt for 20 minutes if nobody’s out there.”
Playing alone also allows Dean to play in any weather conditions.
He is a member at Myrtlewood Golf Club as well as Pine Lakes, and played the great majority of his rounds in 2020 at Pine Lakes.
Some of Dean’s friends at the club presented him with a new set of clubs and golf bag once he hit the initial goal of 367, with his name and “367” stitched below it. “The whole thing turned into something extremely special for me,” Dean said.
This story was originally published January 1, 2021 at 11:13 AM.
