I am saddened to report that longtime WAX Nation citizen David D. has passed away this summer at the age of 83.

Those of you who have been around for more than ten years will remember that we collaborated on a video together, “MCS – Dropping The Hammer” back in the autumn of 2016 and that he featured regularly both in the comments section as doubou2014 and in my time spent at the driving range filming content.

He was 73 years old when we shot these sequences together for the video:

We would hit balls together quite a bit in the 2010s – in fact, he was the first person I met through my blogging, when he visited me on the range way back in 2011, but we had been corresponding since the previous summer when I was working my first video release.

There was a funny comment he made back in the day – I found it funny because when we first began to spend time together on the range, he had told me how he would follow the PGA Tour on its winter trip through South Carolina, where he and his wife spent the cold months.

He would video the pros hitting balls at the tournament venue in South Carolina and post the footage on his YouTube page.

The comment I found funny was on an afternoon where I had invited local WAX Nation citizens for a meet-up at my range, and I was talking and hitting various irons at the flags, when he came out with, “I want to hit my irons like DJ does…”

“Get out of here,” I laughed, knowing what he did in the winters.

“I want to hit my irons like DJ does,” he repeated, and I turned around to face him.

“Come on, David – you spend your winters following Rory McIlroy and all those other pros and watching them hit balls!”

He repeated a third time, “I want to hit my irons like DJ does…” and everyone standing around laughed.

He was also my witness when I reached a 600 yard par-5 hole in two shots with an old Ben Hogan driver and a persimmon 4-wood out of the rough slightly off the fairway on the day we took the below picture.

DJ & David D. – Royal Ashburn G.C. 2017

He lived a long and active life, loving golf and the game, and even when he wasn’t physically able to continue to play in his late 70s when his body began to decline around the beginning of the Covid pandemic, he would continue to send me golf articles for my reaction to them.

I enjoyed our time together and remarked to him back in 2022 when it was clear his golfing days were over that I wished I had appreciated our time together back in the days, as I missed his company.

R.I.P., old friend – I will remember you.