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A pro golfer who spent the week leading up to the Kenya Open delivering groceries may be able to take a break from that gig after earning more than $215,000 courtesy of a second-place finish.
On Sunday, we were treated to a feel-good story on the PGA Tour courtesy of Jake Knapp, a rookie who won $1.4 million with a victory at the Mexico Open just a couple of years after he was working as a bouncer at a nightclub in California in order to make enough money to continue pursuing his dreams of playing golf for a living.
However, he wasn’t the only man to secure a life-changing amount of cash on the links over the weekend.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume most people reading this aren’t familiar with Joe Dean, a 29-year-old golfer from England who was occupying the 2,390th spot in the Official World Golf Rankings when he headed to Muthaiga Golf Club to compete in the Kenya Open.
Dean earned the right to compete on the DP World Tour last year but hasn’t been able to regularly compete in events on the circuit due to the associated travel costs. In order to make money, he’s been working as a delivery driver for the supermarket chain Morrisons, a job he was still doing in the week leading up to the Kenya Open.
He found himself in contention after posting a 68 and 69 in his first two rounds, and after shooting 68 on Saturday, he closed out the tournament with a 67 with the help of the birdie on the final hole that put him in a tie for second at -12—good enough for the £170,000 (~$215,500) paycheck he was able to take home.
Dean declined to say whether or not he plans to quit his other job after the tournament wrapped up, saying:
“I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. It’s got to be life-changing. It’s what people dream of, it’s what I’ve been aiming to do for a long time.”
You love to see it.