#TOURBound: North Carolina’s Taylor Dickson secures first PGA TOUR card

Taylor Dickson does it his way, and his game will travel to the 2025 PGA TOUR.

Dickson secured his first PGA TOUR card with a third-place finish Sunday at the Price Cutter Charity Championship presented by Dr Pepper, moving to fifth on the season-long Korn Ferry Tour Points List. The top 30 at season’s end will earn 2025 PGA TOUR membership, and Dickson is now comfortably inside that number.

Dickson, 31, spent nine years as a pro to reach this point. But perhaps he’s just getting started.

“That’s crazy,” Dickson said Sunday after securing his card. “I might tear up, I don’t know. I’m going to go home tonight, see the family; it will probably sink in right then. Last year, got close, didn’t get the job done, and got progressively better. Moving in the right direction, so just got to keep that going.

“My attitude (has improved) … not getting down on bad shots, because they’re going to happen. Sometimes I can get pretty negative, but this year I’ve done a really good job of not, for the most part. We’re golfers and we’re human, but just staying positive, really, knowing that good golf’s in there. Don’t let the bad shots bug you too much.”

Golf wasn’t always at the forefront of Dickson’s ambitions. He played travel soccer as a kid in Gastonia, North Carolina, and became good friends with his teammates – with whom he also played baseball and basketball. It wasn’t until high school when he decided to focus on golf, inspired by his high school teammate Harold Varner III, a few years older, who played collegiately at East Carolina. That motivated Dickson to play college golf himself, and he earned a scholarship to Winthrop University, where he played four years before turning pro in 2015.

Dickson spent time on mini-tours including the SwingThought Tour and GPro Tour before earning Korn Ferry Tour status at 2019 Q-School, and he has competed mostly full-time on the Korn Ferry Tour ever since. He nearly earned his TOUR card last season, finishing No. 39 on the season-long standings. Rather than let the near-miss get him down, he channeled that confidence into this year, where he has won twice – Astara Chile Classic presented by Scotiabank, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas Wichita Open – to move to the verge of his first TOUR card.

With four rounds in the 60s at the Price Cutter, he cemented it.

“I feel like I’ve been playing super aggressive, which has paid off twice (with wins), but has also hurt … but it’s worked out so far,” Dickson said Sunday. “The rest of the season, just keep playing good golf and get as many points as I can, maybe try to get another win.”

Dickson employs an unconventional setup position, as he sets his clubhead slightly past the ball at address point before beginning his backswing. He knows it looks a bit strange, but the results are inarguable. He’s a two-time winner this season, and Sunday he nearly became the first Korn Ferry Tour player since Wesley Bryan in 2016 to win three times in one year.

“It’s pretty weird,” Dickson described his setup. “Bounce it out toward the heel. To me, it just looks like … the ball is right at the heel, but I’ve seen video, gets a lot further out. I don’t really know why I do it. I just started doing it eight, nine years ago. Some people think it started as a drill, but now I just let it bounce out there and swing.

“Growing up with a friend of mine, his dad would just barely move his head like that, so I just copy that, and then the whole bouncing the club out … that just came out of nowhere, and I just do it. Just to me it looks normal, so I just roll with it.”

And now he’s rolling to the PGA TOUR.