My name is Brian Dykes. With an “I.”
But I go by Bry. With a “Y.”
Mainly because if I spell it “Bri,” people will call me “Breeee.”
I started playing golf when I was nine years old. My dad cut down a set of clubs for me and put electrical tape around the shafts for grips. I’m left-handed, but the clubs were right-handed. So I learned to play right-handed.
I’ve been doing it that way for more than 51 years.
I took to golf quickly. I loved hockey, too, but I was 4’2″ going into seventh grade, so hockey wasn’t exactly in my future.
Golf was.
I played four years in high school and then played college golf at Roosevelt University. I played in dozens of tournaments and eventually qualified for the Illinois Open.
Then, three days before the tournament, I tore my ACL playing soccer.
At the company I worked for. During my lunch hour. While I was on vacation.
Not exactly the brightest moment of my life.
High school started the obsession. College took it another step. But my biggest step forward came when I got married.
What does marriage have to do with golf?
Everything.
My wife, Barb, was my biggest fan. In 1995, she built me a hitting bay in our garage.
That’s when the true addiction was born.
I became really good.
And she cheered me on.
But I had a problem: the “blow-up” hole. I could make great golf look very easy—and then completely lose my mind on one hole.
And then came the surgeries.
Seven surgeries in twelve years.
Knee. Neck. Nose. Back.
I was basically a pin cushion.
Somewhere in all of that, though, golf started teaching me something far more important than how to shoot a lower score.
It taught me that it is a game.
A game designed to make you use your body and your mind together. A game that gets you outside. A game that challenges you in ways that are both incredibly frustrating and incredibly beautiful.
And, most importantly, a game.
I was never going to win a PGA Tour event. So why was I going to lose my mind over a bad shot?
I learned to laugh.
I learned to breathe.
I learned to look around and appreciate where I was.
I learned that golf is unbelievably difficult. For a million things to come together at exactly the right time, you have to be extraordinarily fortunate and extraordinarily good.
By the time I was 40, I finally accepted that I wasn’t going to become a professional golfer.
And that realization changed everything.
I stopped treating golf like something that had to be taken seriously.
I started enjoying it.
And strangely enough, my game got better.
Today, I can honestly say I am happier on a golf course—or on any piece of land—than I have ever been.
Then came one of those moments golfers dream about.
On my 40th birthday, I made an albatross on the fifth hole at Fox Bend Golf Course.
Driver. 6-iron. DOUBLE EAGLE.
An albatross is even rarer than a hole-in-one, and somehow I got one on my birthday.
But some of my favorite golf memories have nothing to do with my score.
In 2014, Barb and I had our second-best day ever together.
We played golf with our son, Calvin.
It was the first time Barb and I had ever played golf together.
And on the third hole Calvin had ever played in his life, he made a true birdie.
A 40-foot putt.
That is the kind of golf memory you never forget.
Then life changed.
In 2023, Barb suffered a massive stroke. She lost her speech, the use of her right arm, and so many other things that were horrifying for our family.
But Barb was stronger than Muhammad Ali.
She fought.
And she kept fighting. She drove me as my “Cart Caddie” seventeen times at Calumet Country Club in 2025.
She spent her life paying it forward. Barb would help her worst enemy. She actually did. She volunteered, she donated often, and she would drop everything to help someone in need.
She was always my biggest fan, but she was also the person who pushed me to become a better person.
She told me that if I ever got into the golf business, I had to pay it forward.
“Give free lessons to kids and women.”
So in 2025, I finally got into the business of golf.
Thanks to Barb and her finger pointing.
She is no longer with us (not in the way you think), but I still look to her for wisdom and guidance. I still hear her voice telling me what matters. And see her shaking finger pointing me in the right direction.
And I made her a promise.
I intend to keep it.
More kids need to play this game.
More women need to play this game.
Because golf can be competitive, frustrating, humbling and ridiculously hard.
But it can also bring a family together.
It can get you outside.
It can teach you patience.
It can teach you how to laugh at yourself.
It can give you memories that last a lifetime.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, it can teach you something about life.
That’s what golf has done for me.
And now, I want to pay it forward.