‘Dynamite’ Goodloe one of golf’s great lost characters

The boy who would be King Charles III was a wee lad and not yet invested as the Prince of Wales when he stumbled upon meeting a short and ample gentleman with a Southern drawl as sweet and thick as sorghum molasses in the 1950s at a golf course in Scotland. The low-slung man greeted the young royal using a name he likely never heard again in the 73 years it took him to ascend to the throne of the United Kingdom.

“Mr. Prince” is how the man called “Dynamite” addressed young Charles Philip Arthur George, a greeting that only made him more irresistibly charming to legions of golf fans on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s surely only a coincidence that “Mr. Prince” would name his first-born son and heir to the throne William, though it’s not unlikely the young Charles was just as thoroughly smitten by this unforgettable character from the small south Georgia town of Ocilla: William Goodloe Jr.

Bill “Dynamite” Goodloe had that kind of effect on people.

“Everybody is just wild about ‘Diney,’ the roly-poly blond bl...