From delivery driver to pro golfer, England’s Joe Dean hopes to build on rookie year

SINGAPORE – It was just over a year ago that Joe Dean was working evening shifts as a delivery driver for British supermarket chain Morrisons – three to four times weekly – while ranked 2,902nd in the world golf rankings.

The Englishman, who turned professional in 2016, took up the job during the Covid-19 pandemic when the golf tours went into a standstill.

Even though he now plays on the DP World Tour, the 30-year-old still carries lessons with him from his time as a delivery worker.

Dean said: “It definitely keeps you humble and down to earth and it does put things into perspective.

“Doing that for three years put things into perspective and makes you realise how fortunate we are to travel the world and basically hit a little round ball around the field for five, six hours a day.”

He is in town for the Porsche Singapore Classic, which is taking place at Laguna National Golf Resort Club from March 20 to 23. Despite shooting a three-under 69 in the second round on March 22, he missed the cut, placing joint-112nd with a five-over 149 total.

While Dean treasures his experiences as a professional golfer, getting his DP World Tour card in 2023 was initially met with both happiness and fear.

Playing on the European circuit meant more travelling, which was something he has struggled with since experiencing a traumatic incident over a decade ago.

In 2014, while he was at an England training camp in Portugal, his family dog of 16 years had to be put to sleep. That inadvertently “created some sort of separation anxiety with travelling”, Dean said in a Player Blog article on the Tour’s website.

Although he was previously on the PGA EuroPro and Challenge Tours, he mainly competed in one- or two-day events.

But he has grown more comfortable with travelling, thanks to an unexpected solution: hypnotherapy.

Winning the Order of Merit on the 2022 Pro Tour earned him 12 free sessions with hypnotherapist Darren Hirst, which turned out to be a game changer.

He said: “It just all started to align strangely. I went and saw Darren Hirst and probably eight to 10 sessions later, I was fine with travelling.

“Don’t me get wrong, I didn’t enjoy it, but I was at a stage where I could cope with travelling.”

It also helped that his fiancee Emily Lyle was able to travel with him, which made being away from home easier.

In his rookie season in 2024, he notched five top-10 finishes – including two runner-up spots – which propelled him to his current world ranking of 141st.

While he missed the cut at his first event of the 2024 season, the Qatar Masters, Dean put in a much-improved performance at the Magical Kenya Open a fortnight later, placing tied-second with Nacho Elvira. The duo were two strokes behind winner Darius van Driel.

He claimed another joint-second finish at the KLM Open in June, this time falling short in a three-man play-off with Marcus Kinhult and eventual champion Guido Migliozzi.

Dean hopes he can replicate that form this season.

He said: “With me being so close to winning a couple of times, I don’t feel the need to sort of reinvent the wheel...

“Nothing really out of the ordinary – it would be nice to get over the line this year and maybe win one. If somebody offered me the same results as last year, I’d probably take them as well.”