MEET THE MAN WHO MISSED OUT ON KOEPKA’S MILLIONS
Caddie Mike Thomson tells James Corrigan how he set the American on the road to glory and why he does not regret being jettisoned just as he hit the big time
Even if he is not near a TV screen, Mike Thomson knows exactly when Brooks Koepka has triumphed at yet another major. “My phone goes bananas,” Thomson says. “My mates and all the other caddies, texting to say: ‘Just look at what you could have won.’ Yeah, highly amusing.”
Thomson holds a special place in the remarkable story of Koepka, the all-american kid who courageously decided to flee the cosseted country clubs of his homeland and instead kick-start his career on the barely travelled route of the Challenge Tour, the Europe Tour’s main feeder league.
In nine weeks together, Thomson and Koepka won three times, earning the so-called “golden promotion” to the Tour proper.
When Koepka hugged Thomson on the 18th green at the Spey Valley at the victorious completion of the Scottish Hydro Challenge, it seemed their relationship was rock solid. Except, the then 23-year-old, labelled “A Superstar in the Making” on the Tour’s official website that night, was not only saying goodbye to the minor leagues, but to his bagman as well.
A Northern Irishman, Ricky Elliott, was given the call and almost six years on, it is estimated that Elliott has earned £1.61million as a percentage of Koepka’s winnings, with four majors and five other titles around the world – plus a retainer.
Thomson has not been so successful. His current player, the Welshman Stuart Manley, earned approximately £130,000 last year, has just topped £90,000 this season and is in a fight to retain his Tour card. With caddies usually picking up 10 per cent for a win, seven per cent for a top 10 and five per cent for any other result, the
numbers are not kind and Thomson has to supplement his income by caddying for tourists at Kingsbarns in his home county of Fife. At 36 he is still waiting to “get over the line” on the European Tour.
“People say it must be a sickener having ‘lost’ Brooks, particularly as you were so successful together, but that’s just golf and that is this profession for you – no contracts, you can be fired week by week, even if you have won,” he said.
“But there are no regrets on my behalf and it’s cool to be a part of Brooks’s story. He’s a great lad. When he won his first major [the 2017 US Open] he sent me a text saying: ‘All this started with you.’ When I run into him we always reminisce about the old days.”
Thomson had been a Tour caddie for three years, originally for his compatriot George Murray, when he first got the call. He almost said no. “Sam Haywood [now Danny Willett’s caddie] was working for Pete Uilhein, who was the first of these young Americans to come over to the Challenge Tour and he shared a flat in Florida with Brooks,” Thomson said.
“Sam asked if I wanted to caddie for Brooks, but although he was this US wonderkid, you’ve seen it before when they don’t amount to much. I had a bag on the main Tour and was reluctant to give it up for the Challenge Tour, where the money is less and you have basically got to fend for yourself with travel and cars and everything. But I spoke to Brooks and he said he was going to play a nineweek run and I thought: ‘Well, if it’s nothing else, it’s regular work.’
“It turned out to be rather more than that, although when he missed the cut in our first event together I did think: ‘Here we go.’”
Koepka won the very next week, the Montecchia Open presented by Polaroid. In Padova, Italy, he provided a snapshot of his future dominance, prevailing by seven shots. Four weeks later he won in Spain by 10 shots and then three weeks on came his graduation in Aviemore.
“Everyone was talking about Brooks – players, officials, referees all coming up to me and asking: ‘How good is this kid?’” Thomson said. “The buzz was all about his length, but to me it was how fearless he was.
“I remember one par four in Italy which I thought was a lay-up with a four iron. He whipped out his driver. I said: ‘What are you doing?’ He said: ‘That bunker is at 290 [yards] right? That’s no problem, I’ll carry that easy.’
“‘But the fairway narrows into almost nothing after that,’ I told him. He replied: ‘But if I’m in the rough I’ll only be 40 yards from the green. Listen, my driver is my biggest advantage and unless it’s absolutely brain-dead, I’m hitting it regardless.’
“He completely changed my mindset about golf, if not the whole of the Challenge Tour.”
It was a two-way fairway. “We’d go out for dinner together every night and it wasn’t the usual caddie 10-pints-a-night stuff, as we’d have long chats,” Thomson said. “Brooks said he was glad he had taken that path as it showed him proper life on the road, going to different cultures, the language problems, different courses, different conditions. He said it would set him up for his career and he was right.
“When the end came, I got a phone call from his manager saying he was going to concentrate on America and that was it. I don’t know if it was Brooks’s decision or his management’s or both. You can’t fault him really – it’s worked out OK, hasn’t it?”
‘I get texts whenever Brooks wins, asking if I’m thinking about what I could have earned’