When Arnold Palmer was confronted with his last round as Masters Competourrent in 2004, he delivered one of the more moving lines of Golf.
“I knew it was time,” said Palmer. “But I never wanted it to end.”
On Thursday morning at the Wyndham championship, Joel Dahmen noticed that he shared his own version of Palmer’s words while talking for the first time about his separation of old Caddy and best friend, Geno Bonnalie.
Two weeks ago, when the golf world turned to the open championship, Dahmen announced that he and Bonnalie had separated. This has been the year of the player-caddie split, with various other controversial couples who went their own way, but this collaboration was one of the most sustainable and perhaps most loved one in sport. Neither Dahmen nor Bonnnaalie announced the reason for the split, although, as with most player-caddie fracture, little explanation was needed. Golf is a sport that is played under the auspices of Eating what-you-killAnd both Caddy and player came in the dog days of a lean year.
Nevertheless, the news from Dahmen and Bonnalie-best friends from childhood, right hand people sent through fat and thin-shock waves through the sport. Defined in a year by looper changes (Max Homa and are Caddy/best friend Joe Greiner, Collin Morikawa and his old looper JJ Jakovac, Matt Fitzpatrick with Billy Foster, Morikawa again With greiner), and in a sport defined by the many long hours alone on the road, Dahmen and Bonnalie’s were the most striking departure.
While Dahmen spoke of the podium after the low round of his year, a Thursday 61 was in the Wyndham who pushed him in the lead on the opening round, not even the euphoria of a start of nine at the bottom of a Do-Or-Die PGA Tour event to wash the emotion that he still felt about the split.
“Man, I love Geno,” said Dahmen after the round. “We still text almost daily. He is doing well. Yes, I mean, I miss him but sometimes the hardest – you have to do something difficult -“
He was silent for a moment.
“Look, it was not an easy decision,” said Dahmen. “I will not say that I am not happy with it, but it is difficult. He is my best friend, he is still my best friend.”
While Dahmen thinks about the Caddy change in the aftermath of his best round of the year, he was quickly rejected that Bonnalie’s looping had somehow been responsible for his bad game.
“I had to change something with me,” said Dahmen. “It was more about me. It was my mentality, it was what I did and I had to become the owner of what I did. I didn’t do that right. So a way for me to do it is as simple as just playing a little golf.”
Dahmen has always been a stepped player, and in a strange turn, the movement of Bonnalie do seem to have fueled something in his game. He finished T17 in his first start without Bonnalie at the Barracuda Championship and followed that with a T39 on 3M Open from last week. He will be in the Wyndham championship on Friday with a surprising 18-hole lead, and needs a victory or second place to safely safely safely a surprise offer in the Fedex Cup play-offs.
“I mean, I have had three top 2s in my career. I mean, it’s not even something, right?” He said when he was asked about the chance to make a late play -off run. “The play -offs would be a bonus for me.”
They would be a bonus, certainly, but a meaningful one. Dahmen and his wife will soon expect a second child, and a handful of weeks of payable with a large money to end the year, a long Road in setting up the future competition status of Dahmen … to say nothing about filling the toy selection in the nursery.
Yet these are unknown waters for Dahmen, who never experienced life as a PGA Tour Pro without a bonnalie on the bag. Fortunately Geno will stay in the corner of his husband in Greensboro this weekend. He will just take on a different role.
“So yes, I love him, I miss him,” said Dahmen. “I think we’ll see him again soon.”
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