Some More Caddy Stories

[Another Steve]

Caddies can be the difference between winning and losing
By Bob Harig

TULSA, Okla. -- The weight they carry with their player can be just as important as the clubs they lug around golf courses all over the world. Being a caddie in the high-tech, big-money realm of professional golf can mean many things, not the least of which can be acting as a policeman.


The year's fourth and final major championship is set to unfold this week at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, and as sure as there will be heat and humidity in Oklahoma this time of year, there will be some tension between the ropes among players and caddies. And it is only heightened at a major championship.

Come Sunday, the Wanamaker Trophy might be claimed based on the input given -- or not -- by a caddie.

With some better decisions down the stretch at Carnoustie, Romero might be the owner of a Claret Jug.

"Caddies are priceless," said Lin Strickler, a veteran of more than 30 years on the PGA and Champions tours. "You cannot do it with your friend, your father, your relative. The time to step up is right then and there. [Jean] Van de Velde's caddie at Carnoustie [in 1999] is now laying bricks. You're a hero for 71 holes and then look ? there are just very few times that you have a chance to really make something happen."


There were more than a few caddies watching last month's British Open, wondering whether maybe their input might have made a difference and led to a second consecutive Argentine major champion.

With a 2-shot lead and only two holes to play, Andres Romero tried to pull off a difficult shot that went terribly wrong. He pulled a 2-iron from his bag on Carnoustie's 17th hole and tried to hit a shot out of deep rough in which the ball could not even be seen. His ball snap-hooked out of the rough, failed to clear the Barry Burn less than 90 yards away, hit one of the bricks that holds up the wall, took a horrible turn to the right and went out of bounds, some 60 yards away. When Romero bogeyed the next hole, he ended up missing a playoff by 1 shot.

Which makes you wonder: Could an experienced caddie have made a difference in that situation? Romero's caddie was his brother, Jose. There appeared to be no debate. Afterward, Romero said he never considered laying up or playing safe by hitting a more lofted club out of the tall grass.

Maybe somebody with a bit more moxie would have made a compelling argument.

"I think that was a very poor decision," said Damon Green, a veteran caddie who works for Masters champion Zach Johnson and was watching the end of the British Open on television with several European Tour caddies. "I would have to really stress to Zach in that situation, 'Hey, bogey is good right here. If we hit a perfect shot, we're still not going to get it on the green. Let's lay it up and try to wedge it close and have a chance at the par.'

"I'm more conservative when it comes to having a lead. The finishing holes there were so hard. If you played 1-over, you're probably picking up shots on the field. I would have had to open my mouth there. I might have gotten fired, but we weren't going to hit something like that."

What made it all the more agonizing for Romero -- who had just 88 yards to carry the burn and 234 yards to the pin -- was that after he took a drop in a better lie, he managed to hit a 3-wood onto the green and two-putted for his double-bogey 6. Later, he said he wished he had hit the 3-wood all along -- although most observers felt a smarter play was a lofted iron over the creek.

"When I was watching that, I thought the announcers had the club wrong," said Lance Ten Broeck, who caddies for Jesper Parnevik. "I thought there was no way he was hitting a 2-iron out of that crap."

The incident brought back a memory for Ten Broeck, who caddied for Parnevik in the 1999 Open at Carnoustie. They were in the second-to-last group on Saturday, and Ten Broeck said they were close to the same spot as Romero on the 17th hole. Parnevik pulled out a 5-wood, which is when Ten Broeck let loose with a couple of profanities. He had forgotten he was within range of a BBC microphone.

"It appears that Jesper and his caddie are in a bit of a tizzy," broadcaster Peter Alliss quipped.

Parnevik did chip out eventually and made a bogey.

"When it comes to a major, the caddie needs to be experienced in that situation, as well as the player," Ten Broeck said. "Most top players who have good caddies who have been with them for a while, the caddie will assert themselves if they think it's the wrong thing to do.

"The player knows what the lie is and if he thinks he can do it. Sometimes it's just plain stupid. You have to take your medicine. That's how you make big numbers. But these guys are so good that sometimes it's hard for them to admit that they can't pull off a shot."

Ten Broeck, a former tour player who started caddying for Parnevik in '99, cited the example of 2001 PGA champion David Toms. Faced with a tough decision on the 72nd hole -- whether to go for the green with a wood or lay up in front of a water hazard -- caddie Scott Gneiser talked Toms into laying up and trying to make par by holing a putt instead of taking the risk.

Toms did just that. He layed up, wedged onto the green, then holed the 10-footer to beat Phil Mickelson by a stroke.

Could similar advice have helped Romero?

"Most of it is the relationship between the player and the caddie," said veteran caddie Brian Smith, who works for Justin Leonard. "That gives you the ability to step in and say something.

"I think if it was Joe [LaCava] and Fred [Couples] coming down the stretch, or Jim [Mackay] and Phil [Mickelson] ? they've been together a long time, so obviously they respect what each other says. ? But in the end, it's always going to be the player's decision. They know how they feel and what they want to do. The player is either going to have your respect and take it into consideration or is just going to do his thing. But I wouldn't just be throwing my opinion around."

Strickler, who spent much of his career working for Ben Crenshaw and is now caddying for Robert Gamez, said he knows what he would have done had he been with Romero at Carnoustie. Or this week at Southern Hills.

"I'd have that bag planted about a yard from the ball and wouldn't move it," he said. "I wouldn't say anything. My disapproval is without words. It's just leaving the bag right there."

Bob Harig is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.

 

[Another Steve]

Players mull how to pay caddies from deferred FedExCup cash
Aug. 8, 2007

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- The FedExCup will pay $10 million to the winner from a $35 million prize fund, all of which goes into a retirement plan that players won't see for quite some time.

That leads to two questions: What kind of bonus does the caddie receive? And how is it paid?

Players typically share the spoils with their bagman, some as much as 10 percent when they win.

"It would be hard to pay on something you don't get," Scott Verplank said. "I guess you could sign a contract that says, 'My grandkids will pay you."'

Stewart Cink is on the PGA TOUR policy board, and he was surprised that a FedExCup bonus for caddies only now has become a topic. Asked about it over the weekend, he said with a smile, "We're not going to talk about that."

"I had that discussion with my manager about how to do it, and I don't know to be honest," he said. "The FedExCup money ... half of it was money already in our retirement fund, and we didn't pay our caddies out of our retirement fund. Half of it is new money, but it's all deferred. Maybe I'll pay him 10 percent as it comes out of the account."

When does that happen? When does a golfer ever retire?

"I don't even know the answer to that," Cink said.

The new money was a reference to the prize fund. The PGA TOUR has done away with retirement contributions based on cuts made, so about $17 million of the FedExCup money comes from that program.

Caddies will get paid regardless, because each of the four tournaments through the end of the FedExCup has a separate purse, just like any other tournament.

Still, David Toms joined the long list of players who can't figure it out.

"I guess I'll pay him in 25 years when I get the money," he said. "Hopefully, we're both still alive."

 

[Another Steve]

Have never heard this story..Interesting

"His walks were never spoiled
Caddie Grier recalls memorable PGA ride
By Jim McCabe, Globe Staff | August 9, 2007

Confession of an ex-caddie: He loved his job.

He really did, too. All of it. The heavy bag. The walking of the course on Mondays. The give-and-take with his player. The caddie-shack time. The trips to the British Open and tournaments in Australia and New Zealand were adventurous rewards he was fortunate to have experienced.

Shayne Grier cherishes all of the memories from an eight-year sojourn across the PGA Tour landscape in the 1970s. But as the 89th PGA Championship prepares to tee off today at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., Grier concedes that his favorite memory is rekindled.

That's because Southern Hills was the site of the 1977 US Open where Grier had a small role in one of professional golf's most awkward happenings. Hubert Green was en route to the championship that blistering hot Sunday when USGA officials and local police had to tell him of an anonymous death threat that had been phoned in the day before.

"Hubert never told me," said Grier.

Bizarre is what it was. A woman's voice had delivered the death threat sometime Saturday, claiming Green would be gunned down as he played the 15th green, but the message never got to USGA officials until Sunday. USGA president Sandy Tatum and a Tulsa police officer delivered the news to Green, who was told he had as much time as he needed to make up his mind. Leading by one with four holes to play, he needed only a few seconds to decide. He was playing on, thank you very much.

The one concession Green seemed to make was this: He would keep his distance from playing competitor Andy Bean and also from his own caddie. After pulling his drive left off the tee at the par-4 15th, Green made sure he walked well away from Grier as he went to his ball. At first Grier couldn't understand why, but after being told by an official what was going on, the caddie acted.

"When I caught up to him, I stood right by his side," said Grier. "I told him, 'Let's give them two targets to shoot at.' "

Who knows? It may have been the defining moment of that day, because Green seemed to settle down. He made par at the 15th, birdied the par-4 16th to increase his lead to two, then finished par, bogey to claim the first of his two major championships. The other came at the 1985 PGA Championship, but by then Grier had long been retired from the caddie ranks.

The Massachusetts native has settled on Cape Cod. He works for the Steamship Authority and plays his single-digit handicap golf out of Cummaquid, still passionate about the game that provided so many special memories. He feels he helped usher in a new wave of PGA Tour caddies, college-educated and independent-thinking men who considered their jobs to be more than lugging a 40-pound bag filled with clubs. Grier walked off distances to bunkers and hole locations, studied contours in the fairways, and took note of different green speeds. All of the information was written down in yardage books and shared with his player.
It was something I loved to do," said Grier.
There are a handful of men who share his sentiments, caddies with whom he broke into the business and who are still at work. Mike "Fluff" Cowan, Pete Bender, Andy Martinez, Mike Carrick, Joe "Gypsy" Grillo, Greg Rita. They were there in the 1970s when Grier walked PGA Tour fairways and they're still there.

Underappreciated pieces to the golf scene? Absolutely.

"But we all share one thing in common," said Grier. "A love of the game."

All of the special memories, said Grier, can be credited to one man, the late and great Cuz Mingolla, who single-handedly made sure the PGA Tour had a home in Massachusetts. As owner of Pleasant Valley CC in Sutton, Mingolla opened his doors to the game's best players, but he also made sure Grier had a spot in the tournament.

"Only one man did more for me in my life than Cuz, and that was my father," said Grier.

Career break No. 1 came in 1965 at the Carling World Open at Pleasant Valley when a lottery determined who worked for whom. Grier drew a young man named Jack Nicklaus. Three years later Grier got lucky again when he worked for Arnold Palmer. It sealed his passion and convinced him that this was the life he wanted. Mingolla and others made sure Grier found his way onto the PGA Tour.

Eight years filled his memory chest to the brim, but nothing stands out more than that Sunday at Southern Hills and the quiet time he spent with Green in the locker room right after the title had been won. The pressure of major championship golf had provided enough anxiety, but to have thrown a death threat into the mix? Well, it was surreal.

"But Hubert looked me in the eye and said, 'Shayne, the press will want to talk about this, but nothing good will come out of talking about it,' " said Grier.

So for years, Grier followed Green's lead. He talked very little about the incident. But as the return of major championship golf returns to Southern Hills, it's only natural that the 30th anniversary of that happening stirs emotions. Green, now 60 and in a battle with oral cancer, shared his story with Golf World and reiterated that he never had any intention of not playing that Sunday.

It's part of the makeup of the man who just a few months ago was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame. It was a well-deserved honor and from his home on Cape Cod, Grier can take comfort in knowing that he shouldered the load for a small piece of that prize.