Darby’s caddy gig is far from a good walk spoiled
Mike Darby still has the first cheque he made as a caddy framed in the office of his Richmond home. It was for $62.50, money Darby earned for caddying for a friend at the B.C. Match Play tourney many years ago. This past fall, Darby earned a much bigger cheque when he was on the bag for Nick Taylor’s PGA Tour win at the Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi. Taylor made $720,000 US for that victory, and caddies normally get about 10 per cent for a win. Darby doesn’t want to get into specifics, but says, “we can credit Nick with helping our house-hunting.” It also helped fund the honeymoon Darby and his new bride, Joen Jorge, went on in Jamaica last month. “We thank Nick for our honeymoon, that is what we say,” Darby says. “We were able to do the one-week all-inclusive. That was the treat to ourselves.” The win in Mississippi was the culmination of a decade of try- ing to scratch out a living as a caddy. Darby, who just turned 39, didn’t take up golf until he was 20. He fell in love with the game and wanted to play it for a living. But after a few years of struggling on the local tour, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. So he began caddying, working his way up through the Canadian, Web.com and finally PGA tours. “I starved for a while, absolutely,” Darby says. “The last few years have been OK because I have learned how to travel effectively and I am a much better money manager. But there is no way you can do it without help. My family is in the wholesale car business, and on the weeks I am home I am at the office. I work every week I have off.” Darby had begun working last year for Bobby Gates, who after a string of missed cuts had taken a medical leave from the PGA Tour. He got a call in the middle of last year from Taylor, asking him to finish the rest of the year on the Web.com Tour. The rest is history. Taylor played his way onto the PGA Tour and his win in Mississippi makes him exempt through the end of the 2016-17 season. Taylor will have Darby on his bag later this week at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Maui. Darby, who has also caddied in the past for fellow Abbotsford pro Adam Hadwin, can’t wait to get started. “Obviously, I am very excited and what I have said to all my friends is, ‘How many people can say they can’t wait to get back to work?’ Excited is a great word. I am excited to get back to work, and Maui is a nice place to start.” Taylor and Darby first worked together at the 2013 Web. com Tour qualifying school in La Quinta, Calif., where Taylor played well and earned his fulltime status. Taylor asked Darby to caddy for him at the start of last year, but Darby wanted to try to find a PGA Tour bag. “He is an extremely positive guy. There really isn’t a negative bone in his body,”Taylor says of Darby. “He talks a lot more than me on the golf course and that is good. We just match well together … it has just worked really well. We have had a lot of success and we haven’t missed many cuts. It is funny how things worked out.” Darby would use another word: fantastic. He feels blessed to be on Taylor’s bag and thinks November’s win may just be the beginning. “His mental ability to focus and handle the pressure is his strength,” Darby says. “Without insulting all the other players I have worked with … I have seldom seen this level of mental toughness under pressure. I don’t know if you can teach that. “You see it in a man’s eyes, especially on the back nine on Sunday.”