Fort Dodge’s Dave Sergeant — ‘Much more than local golf royalty’
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These days, if a gopher dared to raise its head out of a hole on a fairway of the Fort Dodge Country Club, it wouldn't be Dave Sergeant's fault.
Sergeant was only 6 or 7 years old back in the 1950s when he would join his parents at the country club Sundays after church and lunch - but not to play golf.
"It was the gophers that caught my attention," he said. "I would get a dinky little club to chase them down, but I was never able to catch one of those guys. Then dad told me to swing the club at the ball, not the critters."
Sergeant went on to do just that - swing the club at the ball - when he was 8 years old and has done it so well that today, at 81, he is one of the most distinguished golfers in the city's rich golfing history, winner of scores of amateur tournaments and a member of the Iowa Golf Hall of Fame.
Said his friend Richard Stark: "Dave is easily the most dominant golfer to ever come out of Fort Dodge, and maybe even a nicer person."
He was inducted into the Iowa Golf Hall of Fame in 2014, six years after his longtime Fort Dodge golfing buddy, Tom Chapman Jr., was inducted. Sergeant was working on Chapman's nomination in January 2007 when he learned that his friend, who in his senior year at Iowa was captain of the basketball and golf teams, had died at the age of 62.
Sergeant is widely known for his golfing abilities, but he has contributed greatly to life in the community he has called home from the time his parents moved to Fort Dodge from Sioux City in 1949 with him and his older brother, Bill, in tow.
"Dave is of course known for his achievements in the sport, but he is so much more than local golf royalty," said Eric Pratt, sports editor of The Messenger who has covered Sergeant for 30 years. "He’s a passionate Fort Dodger who has a deep respect for our community: who we are, where we came from and where we’re going.
"Dave is a calming presence with a thirst for knowledge and a caring heart. When you think of people who have invested in our town and stayed loyal to it for decades, his name is one of the first to come to mind. Dave represents the best of what Fort Dodge is at its core."
Said Randy Kuhlman, CEO of the Fort Dodge Community Foundation and the United Way of Greater Fort Dodge, and Sergeant's next-door neighbor: "As a long-time member of the Trails Advisory Board, Dave has been a very strong leader and advocate for our wonderful trail system that runs through Fort Dodge and Webster County. He was very instrumental in raising charitable donations in support of the first phase of the trail that ran from 20th Avenue North to Harlan Rogers Park and then on to Kennedy Park."
Sergeant's dad was a lefthander and so was son Dave, but Country Club pro Bill Hird taught him to hit righthanded, the power arm leading the point of attack. Sergeant is still a lefty in most everything but golf.
From second grade at Duncombe Elementary School through their years at Fort Dodge Senior High School, where they were members of the Class of 1963, Chapman and Sergeant took part in countless activities together including golf, basketball and baseball.
"Tom was one of a kind and ahead of his time," Sergeant said. "He knew how to win, how to prepare, how to think and how to behave."
One summer, the two friends decided to see how many holes they could play in one day - "we walked 108 holes," he said.
The two future Golf Hall of Famers were mentored by Hird, who with his wife, Lorraine, ran golf activities at the Country Club.
"It wasn't as much formalized lessons," Sergeant said. "But when we would be hitting the ball, he would come out and make suggestions, and that was it. It was up to us to implement what he told us."
Both played varsity all four years at FDSH under Coach Tom Hartigan, and both entered junior tournaments throughout the state.
Chapman was recruited by Iowa to play basketball and golf for the Hawkeyes, following in the footsteps of his father, Tom Chapman Sr., also a member of the Iowa Golf Hall of Fame, who played both sports at Iowa. Sergeant attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota., where he was a member of the golf team from 1963 to 1967 and the team MVP his junior year.
From St. Olaf, Sergeant enrolled in Drake University Law School and upon graduation in 1970, he joined his brother Bill in his Fort Dodge law practice. That year, Sergeant married Marjie Emmons of Marshalltown, whom he met at St. Olaf. She earned a degree in education at Drake and taught in Des Moines and Fort Dodge. They divorced in 1981.
Sergeant worked with his brother until 1983, then joined the Johnson Law Firm for four years before establishing his own practice from 1987 to 2020, when he retired from law practice.
"I probably handled more than 16,000 cases as a bankruptcy trustee and represented other clients in many cases," he said. "Helping people and businesses resolve their difficulties gave me the sense I was doing something meaningful. I was able to get to know many members of the bar and court. We remained friends even though we didn’t always agree on everything. Many sought my advice in my specialties, and I was happy to help."
Sergeant's volunteer work has included years of service on the YMCA board and its Camp Foster, serving as an elder and president of the foundation of the First Presbyterian Church, and serving on boards of the Fort Dodge Senior High booster club, Fort Dodge Public School Foundation and the Fort Dodge/Webster County Trails Advisory Board.
At the Fort Dodge Country Club, he has served as club president and on its board of directors. His work for the country club and Fort Dodge Amateur Tournament helped rejuvenate both, Stark said. He also served on the board of the Iowa Golf Association and was part of a committee that created The Golf Foundation of Iowa in 1999. In all these volunteer activities for his club and for the IGA, Sergeant provided pro bono legal service and advice.
Sergeant took 12 years off from competitive golf in the late 1970s to devote more time to his family, law practice and community and church volunteer activities. He played occasionally in local and state events before appearing more frequently on leader boards again in the early '90s.
At one city tournament, he shot a hole in one and the prize was a car, but if he accepted it, he would lose his amateur standing. Proceeds from insurance that the sponsors had taken out as a backup should a winner elect not to take the car were used to establish through the Presbyterian Foundation an annual scholarship, called the Arthur E. and Virginia M. Sergeant Scholarship. For the past 35 years, Sergeant said, the scholarship has been awarded to a high school student who excels academically or who may have "average" grades but displays other qualities that make him or her a good candidate for college studies.
From 1996 through 2001, Sergeant was Iowa Golf Association's Senior Player of the Year four times and runner-up twice. In that six-year stretch he won the Iowa Senior Match Play, the Iowa Masters and the Fort Dodge Amateur four times each and recorded a total of 10 runner-up finishes in those three events. He was runner-up three times in the Iowa Senior Amateur, but it was the one state senior title that eluded him. Not too many years later, he won the Iowa Super Seniors title.
On the national scene, Sergeant qualified for the 1998 U. S. Senior Open played at Riviera CC in Los Angeles - the foursome behind his included Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer – and the 2003 Senior Open played at Inverness in Toledo, Ohio., where his caddy was longtime Fort Dodge friend Mark S. Cady, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice. An Associated Press photo that was published nationwide of Cady plotting out a putt for Sergeant remains one of his prized possessions.
In his letter of support for Sergeant's Hall of Fame nomination in 2014, Cady (who died in 2019) wrote, "His record as a golf champion is as remarkable as the very best in this state, but so too are his accomplishments as a lawyer, community leader and ambassador of the game."
"I love competition with others, the course, but also with myself," Sergeant said. "Tournaments are great, but I don’t need them to compete. Hitting a good shot makes you want to do it again. This game cannot be perfected but from time to time you might hit the perfect shot. That keeps me coming back. We have one of Iowa’s best golf courses (Country Club) and public courses (Lakeside Municipal)."
Sergeant and his wife Sue have raised a blended family since they were married In October 1981.
"We're coming up on 45 years, and I couldn't be luckier than our partnership in everything," he said.
Sue worked as office manager at the Fort Dodge Country Club for 20 years, until 2013, when she joined First American Bank/GreenState Credit Union as mortgage loan originator until retiring in 2023.
That blending comprises Sergeant's three children from his first marriage to Marjie Emmons Sergeant - Leah Sergeant, community services specialist for the Kid Zone Enrichment Program in Tempe, Arizona.; Jennifer Sergeant Kretchman, a speech and language pathologist with the Phoenix Public Schools, and Dr. Kristin Sergeant, on the faculty as instructor and counselor with Phoenix/Maricopa College...as well as Sue's two children from her first marriage to Neal Welch – John Welch, who has been in the food industry many years in Texas and now is manager of Allora Restaurant in Des Moines, and Erin Welch, a para educator with the Bellingham, Washington, schools. Sue and Dave have three grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
"I consider my brother Dave to be my best friend," said Bill Sergeant, 84, who closed his Fort Dodge tax law practice in February 2026 after 60 years.
Responded Dave: "That's what we are to each other and goes all the way back when we were really young. He's been everything to me. Even my baseball coach for our Babe Ruth league team. I'm very proud of all he's done and still doing. Bill continues to be an inspiration to me and many others. At his age doing the things he does nonstop means to me you never stop doing things and finding new things to do. We get together pretty much weekly to go through just about everything. I'm really lucky that he's my brother and for all these years we've lived in the same town."
Bill is an avid outdoorsman - cycling, kayaking, hiking, mountain climbing. He still owns a set of golf clubs but seldom plays golf. He has done substitute teaching in math-related subjects at Fort Dodge Middle School, St. Edmond High School and Fort Dodge Senior High. And he continues to tutor students in math at Iowa Central Community College. He also enjoys playing the violin.
Dave Sergeant believes in giving back. This summer, he continued his role as an instructor in a youth golf camp for about 110 kids, 12 years old and younger.
"It's fun to teach these kids something about the game," he said. "If we can keep them coming back when they're older, that's the trick."
He figures he has shot his age at least 500 times in the last 14 years, the first time when he was 67. "As you get older, shooting your age isn't super difficult."
For the last few golf seasons, Sergeant has taken on a side project: identifying the ages of his home course's oldest living residents – trees.
"I've learned so much about trees in general," he said. "For decades really, I'd play a round of golf and not give it much thought. I'd admire the size or the likely age of one and just go on my way, like most people do."
A couple burr oaks at the 115-year-old country club date back to the 1700s. When he mentioned his project to golf friends Roger and Jackie Brown, Roger went to work designing, purchasing and distributing plaques — with the help of Trophies Unlimited in Fort Dodge — once they had decided on 18 different trees to identify.
Sergeant plays golf at the country club four times a week, three days of nine-hole play with his wife and competes in two to three tournaments a year. It has been a tradition for some 50 years that he and a group of Fort Dodge golfing friends travel to Mississippi and play 36 holes a day for a week. While they missed playing this year, he said, "Who's to say we won't do it once more?"
"I still love this game," he said, "and still hit it decently although not as far. My handicap is at 2.5 or so and average 75/76. I will continue to play as much as I can whether it's with my friends, Sue or on my own. I'm forever grateful I can still do this happily even if a tree is in front of me on the next shot!"
As for gopher sightings, Sergeant said, "Haven't seen any gophers for years. The holes aren't around anymore. A lot of squirrels who could care less about anything and the occasional deer and foxes. A few Canadian geese but we try to discourage them from taking over the ponds."