Dylan Dethier: Golf Writer, Author & GOLF Magazine Journalist
Dylan Dethier has built a career getting remarkably close to the center of professional golf while somehow never losing his appreciation for the simplest version of the game.
He is a writer, author, accomplished golfer and one of the more thoughtful voices covering the sport today. His work has taken him inside the ropes at major championships and alongside the best players in the world, but ask him about the courses that matter most and the conversation quickly turns to a small nine-hole course on the coast of Maine, his college course in Massachusetts, or an afternoon at Interbay in the middle of Seattle.
That combination has always been what we like most about Dylan.
18 IN AMERICA
Dylan’s path into golf journalism began somewhat unconventionally. At 18, before starting college, he packed up his car and spent a year traveling across the United States, working along the way and playing golf wherever he found it.
The journey eventually became 18 in America, published when Dylan was just 22. The premise was beautifully simple: go somewhere new, find a golf course, meet people, play, listen and keep moving.
In many ways, he has been doing some version of that ever since.
Today, Dylan covers professional golf for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com, traveling wherever the game takes him and telling stories about the players, tournaments and personalities shaping the sport. He has become part of a generation of writers who have helped bring readers closer to the people behind the leaderboard, bridging the distance between those who play the game at its highest level and the rest of us who remain endlessly curious about what that world is actually like.
Dylan understands golf well enough to recognize what matters, but remains curious enough to look beyond the obvious story.
Years ago, we asked him what most people misunderstand about a PGA TOUR event. His answer wasn’t about how far the players hit it or how difficult the courses are. It was about Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
The work.
“There’s plenty about being a professional golfer that’s fairly boring,” he told us, pointing to the hours players spend practicing when almost nobody is watching, hitting another 25 chips around a green during a pro-am or working through the same shot again and again.
We tend to experience professional golf through highlights. Dylan sees all the hours between them.
He was there when Tiger Woods won the 2019 Masters, which he called the most amazing thing he had witnessed while covering golf. It’s hard to imagine much topping that.
But Augusta on Sunday afternoon isn’t the only version of golf that interests him.
Not even close.
PROPER SOUL
Ask Dylan to choose one course to play for the rest of his life and he doesn’t pick Augusta National, Cypress Point or Pine Valley.
He picks Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Massachusetts, ten minutes from where he grew up and the course he played almost every day while attending Williams College. After all the golf he has seen since, he still isn’t convinced there are many better courses.
The course that actually changed how he sees the game is even more personal.
Blue Hill Country Club is a small nine-hole course on the Maine coast where Dylan learned to play with his older brother, Evan. Six par 3s, three short par 4s, changing tides and just enough imperfection to give the place what Dylan calls “proper soul.”
We love that description.
Anyone who spends enough time around golf eventually realizes that greatness has surprisingly little to do with how expensive, exclusive or perfectly manicured a course might be. Some places simply have something that can’t be manufactured.
Dylan understands that.
It’s probably why, after seeing some of the greatest golf courses in the world, he can still get excited about Interbay.
Nine holes in the middle of Seattle. City views, mountains in the distance and, according to Dylan, a place “where hot dogs are a lifestyle.”
We’ve played there together.
He’s not wrong.
A GOLFER FIRST
Dylan eventually found his way to Seattle, which means we occasionally get him on a golf course when the TOUR schedule isn’t pulling him somewhere else.
When we first interviewed him, we asked all the usual golfer questions. What’s in the bag? Favorite player? Best ball-striker? Dream foursome?
Some of those answers inevitably change.
The ones that tell you something about the person usually don’t.
His dream foursome was simply his brother and his parents.
His putter at the time was an old YES model he discovered in the back of GOLF Magazine’s storage closet that had apparently once been a backup for Aaron Baddeley. Dylan figured there had to be some magic left in it.
His favorite hole, at least that week, was the 10th at Chambers Bay, climbing through a chute before opening toward Puget Sound, where you can watch trains and boats move through the landscape below.
And when we asked what lesson about golf he hoped to someday pass along, his answer was:
“Aim for the gap in the trees. Even if you miss, you might get a good bounce.”
It’s funny, but there’s something wonderfully optimistic about it.
We also asked Dylan a question we like asking golfers: Do you like fishing, or do you like catching? In other words, is simply playing enough, or does the score still matter?
“I still like to catch,” he said. “I just wish I was slightly better at doing so.”
That might be the most honest answer any golfer can give.
Dylan spends much of his year around the best players in the world. He walks major championships, sees extraordinary golf from inside the ropes and gets access to a version of the game very few people ever experience.
Yet none of it seems to have made ordinary golf feel ordinary.
Taconic still matters. Blue Hill still matters. Interbay matters. A round with his family matters. An old putter with a story matters.
Maybe that’s why his writing connects with golfers.
He can tell us what it feels like inside the ropes without forgetting why the rest of us keep showing up outside them.
Before the TOUR stops, major championships, stories and deadlines, there is still the game itself.
And Dylan still loves to play.
We’re fortunate to call him a friend, a fellow Seattle golfer and, whenever schedules align, someone we’re always happy to meet on the first tee.
Preferably somewhere with a decent hot dog at the turn.
Writer. Golfer. Storyteller. Friend.
Citizen of the Game.