THE EVOLUTION OF THE CADDIE
John Huggan looks at the transformation of caddies through the ages.
As far back as anyone can recall, the caddie was but a humble club carrier, a largely mute male of questionable hygiene, sobriety and sanity. But over time, as the game evolved, the old-school bag man was replaced by a more polished, professional model – part scientist, part mathematician, part gambling man – and occasionally, woman. Today it is a well-paid but unforgiving arena, as John Huggan explains.
It is a tale that has perhaps grown in the telling. But it makes some sort of sense, as well as featuring a bit of a royal connection. It does depend on who you talk to, but there are those who believe that the term “caddie” was first uttered by Mary Queen of Scots back in the late 16th century. The link? That great lady of the links actually grew up in France, where military “cadets” were deployed to carry the clubs by those of a regal disposition – cadet translating as ‘a little chief’.
Whatever the veracity or otherwise of such speculation, a bit further north in Scotland there were no uniforms involved. That demeaning aspect of caddying came much later. So anything went for those known as cadys, caddys, or cadies, what were generalpurpose porters or errand boys in many Caledonian towns during the 18th century. In around 1700, the term caddy was applied by Scottish irony to street loafers, guys who were happy to do odd jobs and run errands. Those lads were little more than bag carriers, local men hired to tote the golfing luggage of those belonging to a more affluent strand of society. In those far-off days – and even a lot more recently – caddies sleeping rough and reeking of cheap alcohol was, if not quite the norm, far from unusual.
“When I first came out on Tour, we literally had caddies who preferred to spend their nights under a bush rather than in a hotel,” confirms former PGA champion Tony Johnstone. Not all of them though.
“There was the odd caddie back then who had simply fallen on hard times, or whose family had thrown him out,” recalled the late Peter Alliss, whose playing career spanned more than 20 years before his retirement in 1974. “But they didn’t all smell of urine and spend every winter in jail.” Still, those hard-living, working-class souls are a big part of the caddie story. For many years, the job remained pretty much unchanged, as did the social standing and backgrounds of those practising the dark art. Carry the bag.
Clean the clubs. Replace the divots. Tend the pin. Offer occasional advice on what club to hit. The basics stayed almost the same until maybe the late 1950s, early 1960s. Before that, the lot of the caddie was generally a hand-tomouth existence, identities often disguised (invariably from the income tax authorities) by well-earned nicknames.
There was ‘Fiery’ Crawford at North Berwick. And ‘Daniels’ at Sandwich, who perhaps not coincidentally died within a year of pocketing the £50 four-time Open champion Walter Hagen slid his way. ‘Butler’ was Henry Cotton’s man. ‘Mad Mack’ was Max Faulkner’s.
“There were many great partnerships on Tour,” confirmed Alliss. “A good caddie was knowledgeable about the game. They were able – after only a few holes – to judge how far you could hit, say, a 5-iron. And local caddies were great at reading the greens. That’s why Arnold Palmer used ‘Tip’ Anderson at St Andrews. And Peter Thomson always had ‘Gillespie’ on his bag. He reckoned he couldn’t get round the Old Course without him.
“I had Jimmy Cousins on my bag through the 1960s. He went on to caddie for Manuel Pinero. He was a Bournemouth lad, a bit of a rascal and my Sancho Panza. I paid him £10 per week from the 1st of March to the 1st of October. He would wash my car on weeks off. And I paid him a bonus if we did well. Once I gave him a steel Rolex watch. It was worth maybe £100 at the time.”
Indeed, back then, caddying was more art than science. Yardages were a mystery, at least they were at first to ‘Chingy’, eight-time Ryder Cup player Neil Coles’ long-time caddie. “Chingy had won The Open Championship with Alf Padgham and was a one-handicap player in his youth,” says Coles. “We were together 14 years. He caddied for the American George Archer at the 1962 Open. Archer was one of the first to pace courses. Chingy latched onto this. Suddenly, we were pacing every course. Or at least he was.
“Anyway, we were at St Andrews. We got to my drive on one hole and I asked him what the marker was. He said, ‘crow sitting on fence to
the right.’ I had to laugh. But that was him. We moved on from pacing to a wheel eventually.”
All caddies did, in the sort of development not everyone views as a positive. Former US Open champion Graeme McDowell has his doubts. Yes, the rate of change in the caddying business has surely accelerated over the last quarter century. But not, says McDowell, always for the better.
“The evolution of the caddie is actually a bit sad,” contends the Northern Irishman. “Their value and worth has decreased significantly. There is far too much information out there now. Players have all that to go on, which takes away from the value of a good caddie. There is less incentive for the caddie to do the extra bit of work that might separate himself from the rest. It is ‘paint by numbers’ for caddies too much of the time. Lazy players can get away with too much. I wish it could be changed – although I know it can’t.”
Indeed, before all that, the job of the caddie was all feel and “knowing your man” as well as the course. But, as McDowell laments, those artists have all but disappeared amidst a cloud of numbers and calculations. In their place are closet mathematicians armed with ever-more sophisticated literature aimed at eliminating any possibility of arithmetical or, on the greens, geometrical error.
“The job has changed dramatically in the more than three decades I’ve been on Tour,” agrees another Irishman Colin Byrne, who has worked for major champions Retief Goosen and Paul Lawrie and more recently on Rafa Cabrera Bello’s bag. “When I started it was just about showing up on time on Tuesday. If you did that you were ahead of the game. And if you had a yardage book you were well ahead of the game. And if the yardages were actually correct you were a top-notch caddie.
“Now it is very different. The job has evolved as the game has evolved. The professionals are now more professional and dedicated. It’s becoming a science more than an art. The information the players get is so stream-lined. Before, a caddie could make a difference just by doing a bit of extra work on the course. Not now though. The yardage books and greens books are so good. You can’t get an edge there.”
Speaking of yardages, Billy Foster – who has worked for the likes of Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood and now, Matt Fitzpatrick during his 37 seasons on the European Tour – still dines out on one yardage-related tale.
“It used to take me six-seven hours to draw up my own yardage book,” says the Yorkshireman. “I was caddying for Seve at Sun City when we had to get a yardage over water. There were no lasers. It took me 75 minutes to measure it by walking through a jungle with a piece of string. The next day I found out I had been trudging through a cobra pit.”
The lot of the caddie has gradually improved since those apparently dangerous times, as have the demands made of those “on the bag”. But it has taken a while. Not too long ago, those who now travel the world in jets and spend their working weeks in nice hotels, were existing more than living.
“When I started, 10 of us travelled to each event on the road,” says long-time caddie Dominic Bott, who has worked for six different European Tour winners. “We had a minibus and slept in a caravan. We drove no matter where we were going. And there was always someone driving. We had some great fun, but we were a long time on the road. I remember we once did 16 weeks straight. If you
SOME CADDIES HAD FALLEN ON HARD TIMES, YES, BUT THEY DIDN’T ALL SMELL OF URINE OR SPEND EVERY WINTER IN JAIL.
said that to the lads now, they’d laugh out loud.”
Those modern “lads” are a very different breed. A trend has gradually developed at the sharp end of the game over the last few years. Eschewing the opportunity to employ a gnarled old veteran, a flurry of high-profile professionals currently walk the fairways alongside a relatively inexperienced band of friends and relatives. There have been other changes too. The level of conversation being one.
“First and foremost, the caddies are now generally more educated than the players,” says Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington. “Not that many players have completed a third-level education. But many of the caddies have. Most of the new breed of caddies say they took the job for a year; they did it for a friend. Those sorts of things. But once they get out there, they find it hard to give up the lifestyle. They are gambling addicts really. Every week they have the chance to win the lottery.
“It’s a great job for a young, single guy. But that’s the problem. They all start out that way. But they can’t give it up. Which is understandable. The travel is seductive, as are many of the places we go. They don’t have to work nine-to-five. They get 25 weeks off a year. Yes, they work hard, but they are in nice places.”
Still, for all of the perks that come with the job, as things have evolved the caddie has understandably had to adjust. For one thing, the man with whom a player spends most of his time is now only part of a growing support team designed to cover every possible aspect of the game.
“When I was on Tour my ‘team’ was me, my caddie and, in the evenings especially, my buddies,” says Johnstone. “We all looked after each other. But things are different now. In my role as an assistant to International captain Nick Price, I was at Firestone for a Presidents Cup meeting three years ago. One player turned up with 13 people on his staff. He had a sports psychologist, a manager, a putting coach, a short game coach, a toe-nail cutter, a sideburn trimmer and a nose-hair plucker. Players are a lot more insular, travelling with their own little group.”
Which is not to say that on-course interaction between player and caddie has lessened in importance. It is between the ropes that the varying needs, wants and moods of the man hitting the shots become most apparent.
“What I ask of my caddie hasn’t changed,” continues Harrington. “But the job has. I don’t like an overbearing caddie. The pro knows how to play golf better than the caddie. The psychology is more important. You can get a monkey to do the nuts and bolts. Which doesn’t mean we always get things right. We’ve had professors on Tour who can’t add up correctly every time. It’s not an intelligence thing.
“There is nothing to the routine stuff really. But knowing what to say and when to say
MANY CADDIES OUT THERE ARE GAMBLING ADDICTS REALLY. EVERY WEEK THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN THE LOTTERY.
it is key. Every player relies on his caddie. I couldn’t play the PGA Tour without my caddie. I need a friend. He is the crutch I lean on. America can be a lonely place for a European player, unless you have someone to socialise with after a round. My caddie is my best friend out there. I couldn’t play on Tour without having someone with me. He is there to drag me out to dinner and improve my quality of life.”
On the other side of that sometimes subtle equation, the caddie has to be, in so many ways, something of a psychologist. Which is no easy task when dealing with large egos, volatile temperaments and tricky situations.
“Spotting signs in your player is key,” says Byrne. “You need to pre-empt his downfall. That is a big part of the job in the modern day. A lot of players work with psychologists and the caddie is increasingly part of that relationship.
“Today’s caddies do way more with player’s heads than our predecessors ever did. We are always trying to get them in the right place mentally to hit the shot.
“You can say the right thing and the wrong thing, even though it is the same thing. It just depends when you say it. Timing is everything. Trying to spark the player back into focus is the aim really. No one can concentrate for four-and-a-half hours. That just wears you out.”
There is one last thing every good caddie provides: a second pair of eyes. That mostly comes in useful when looking for a ball after an errant shot, but it can help post-round too. A few years ago, Kiwi Greg Turner and Santiago Luna of Spain were marking their cards after the opening round of the WINSTONgolf Senior Open in Germany. At first, things weren’t going too well, the pair debating back and forth whether or not Luna had holed for a four at the 10th hole. It wasn’t an argument though. The problem was neither man could remember. Eventually, Turner’s caddie was summoned to confirm what actually happened.
Mary Queen of Scots would have been so proud.
THE MODERN CADDIE NEEDS TO BE A BEST FRIEND FOR HIS PLAYER BUT HE ALSO NEEDS TO BE A PSYCHOLOGIST.