A caddie’s life: Pain and glory

As the European Tour prepares to take the Gulf by storm with the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship, Qatar Masters and the Dubai Desert Classic; those colourful characters that are often referred to as the 15th club – “the caddies”, will be seen pacing the fairways and making final preparations in the hope that their advice will make the crucial difference for their player.

I’ve often heard people refer to caddies on the major tours “as having a dream job”. Getting to see the world, the best courses, mix with the stars, but 99 per cent of caddies will tell you that the saying “the grass is always greener on the other side” was created for their job.

I have a number of good friends that have caddied on a major tour or still caddie and, although having differing levels of success with the players, they all tell the same story of just how difficult a caddie’s life can be – no matter how good a season your boss is having.

When you watch golf on TV it’s hard to look past the common roles from distance advice, club selection and reading greens to the more mundane duties of cleaning the ball, raking bunkers and, of course, carrying the bag.

The real work is in event preparation (undertaken every single week to the “nth” degree) and – perhaps the most important skill – is in possessing the psychological ability to know how to keep their player calm, positive and in good humour throughout the week – on and off the course.

The caddie’s event preparation is more than just marking out the golf course and double-checking distances. The player’s equipment must be monitored for flaws, whether it be a simple regripping or more technical such as checking the loft and lie of each club.

Items such as balls, gloves, tee-pegs, pencils, ball markers all need to be stocked up and checked – you may say that the player should be responsible for some of these tasks but ultimately the caddie is really the player’s manager and needs to take on as much responsibility as possible when it comes to preparing so their player can focus on playing well – it’s about creating a winning partnership and working well as a team.
When it all comes off and a player does well, you can see the delight in the caddie’s face and the sense of great satisfaction. When a player has a bad week the caddie may not have done anything different than the previous week, in fact they may have prepared better than ever before and excelled in every duty.

Then the caddie has to pick them both up, stay positive and focus on doing the same job the following week.