John Dechant is the author of Little Poison: Paul Runyan, Sam Snead, and a Long-Shot Upset at the 1938 PGA Championship.

In 2016 Dechant wrote Scoreless: Omaha Central, Creighton Prep, and Nebraska’s Greatest High School Football Game, which was named one of “12 Really Good New Sports Books” by the Christian Science Monitor. After publication, MaxPreps named the 1960 game that inspired the book the greatest tie game in high school football history. 

In 2021 Dechant profiled the topsy-turvy career of professional golfer Phil Rodgers in an article that was published in issue No. 15 of The Golfer’s Journal. In the course of researching that story, Dechant rediscovered Paul Runyan, Rodgers’ late golf instructor. That led him to plunge headfirst into a study of Runyan’s life and his dramatic upset over Sam Snead at the 1938 PGA Championship.

Today, Dechant lives in Omaha and is the president of Legacy Preservation, a specialty publishing firm. He is a graduate of Creighton University, where he was a member of the men’s golf team that participated in the Missouri Valley Conference. In 2005 he received the team’s “Most Inspirational Player” award.