On the humorous side, Lee Trevino’s caddie once stepped in for John Jacobs, a long player who could be wild, on and off the course. “And on this one hole he hit his tee shot way left, down into a quarry,” related Trevino. Jacobs walked out and looked into the cavernous area and asked Herman, “‘What’s down there?’ Herman just looked at him rather stoically, as serious as could be and said, ‘Bogey, man, Bogey.’”
Don Massengale once had an 18-inch putt to make the cut, and as he stood over it, his caddie Larry Demarco walked up to him and said, “There’s no way you can make that putt.” “Good God,” cried Massengale, “What do you mean?” “I said, ‘There’s no way you can make that putt. The Man upstairs isn’t going to let you because I haven’t made the cut all year.’” Massengale missed the putt, and then chased Demarco down the fairway, waving the putter like a saber. Different times.
The best players in the world can win without a caddie. Jack Nicklaus once said, “To me, a caddie doesn’t make any difference, whether he’s a kid or a guy with a lot of experience.” Kathy Whitworth, the most prolific winner in LPGA history, said when she started she used to rely too heavily on her caddies. “I let the caddie supervise me a little too much. I had some who insisted I use certain clubs…A few of the girls are to the other extreme. Their caddie pretty near hits the ball for them. They’re becoming too dependent on them.” It’s the same today for some players.
Bruce Edwards, who caddied for Tom Watson and Greg Norman before ALS took hislike in 2004, lamented to passing of an era when “every caddie was responsible for walking the course and knowing every yard from every bush and tree and bunker. Today you can buy yardage books at every tournament. All the work’s done for you. I wish we could go back. You had more to show for hard work and knowing what you’re doing.” He never became a caddie for the money, which there wasn’ much of when he began. Instead, he “loved the freedom, and the opportunity to walk three feet from, well, in my case, two of the better golfers in the last three decades, and to hopefully make a difference.”
That’s the thing the old and the current eras have in common, to make a difference. O.B. Keeler, chronicler of Bobby Jones, once aptly described what Edwards felt. Caddies “fight and bleed and die for their ‘man,’” he maintained. “The players get the glory or the sting of defeat. But they don’t do all the fighting.”
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