… i’ll be happy to take tiger’s bag, quietly

by Vic Williams
illustration by Calder Chism

Some caddies die young. Some never seem to die at all, hanging around the shack like the smoke from their millionth cigarette. Most pack enough stories along with their bags of sticks that they’d make for a smokin’ good book, and some even have made for good books, both in the “real” world and those conjured in fiction. Many can even play golf, for real.

Then there’s the fraternity of loopers who move far beyond your basic country club career or summer job: those who work the major tours. It’s by no means a cakewalk for the vast majority of these upper echelon luggers; they fast or feast with their charge’s swing flaws or balky putter, and even the best of the lot can change bags a dozen times in a few years. But a choice few — Steve Williams comes to mind — are lucky enough to score a gig that sets them up for either a short or long life, simply by doing their job well and staying pretty much out of the way while the boss birdies his or her way to immortality.

I find all caddies fascinating, if not for what they do to earn a living, then for what they say on the course and even off, even when they know better and should keep their mouths shut lest the gravy train screech to a halt.

I speak specifically, of course, of Williams, who last December brewed up a tempest in a water hazard by going off the Tiger grid and dissing Phil Mickelson in public during a charity event in his native New Zealand. “Stevie” was quoted in the Taranki Daily News as saying he wouldn’t call Mickelson a great player “because I think he’s a p...k.”

Williams immediately owned up to it. “I visit a lot of golf clubs and do a lot of speaking for charity, and that is one of the questions I get asked the most — what is Tiger’s relationship like with Phil Mickelson,” Williams told the newspaper. “I was simply honest and said they don’t get along. You know what it’s like. You’re at a charity event and you have a bit of fun.

“I don’t particularly like the guy myself,” he continued. “He pays me no respect at all and hence, I don’t pay him any respect. It’s no secret we don’t get along, either.”

Back stateside, Mickelson’s response was classic Phil. “After seeing Steve Williams’ comments, all I could think of was how lucky I am to have a class act like Bones (Jim Mackay) on my bag and representing me.”

The controversy blew over as quickly as a SoCal rainstorm. Tiger responded quickly, saying he was “disappointed” in Williams but stopped well short of firing the guy. No reason to get radical when he’s been on the bag for 13 of his 14 major wins, right? I suppose not, but there’s a certain greasy residue left behind, at least for me. Williams is without doubt a great caddy, but with his comments he veered dangerously close to the kind of self-aggrandizing territory Tiger has never tolerated. Just look what happened to Mike “Fluff” Cowan, an excellent looper and player in his own right who left Peter Jacobsen in the late ’90s to work for Tiger, only to be shown the door after he got a little too big for his bib, at least in the boss’ eyes — remember those hotel commercials where Fluff popped out of a suitcase? He picked up Jim Furyk’s bag right away and has remained there ever since, but along the way he learned his lesson: The best place for a caddy is just out of the camera’s frame, silent but effective, loyal, a pure team player.

Cowan said as much during a conference call just after he, Fred Couples’ caddy Joe LaCava and Rocco Mediate’s caddy Matt Achatz competed alongside their pro partners in the ADT Skills Challenge, which aired on NBC in late December (Greg Norman and his son, Gregory Jr., beat out Achatz and Mediate for the $250,000 grand prize on the final hole; LaCava and Couples finished second while Cowan and Jake got skunked). “When you caddy for a high-profile player, things that you say are going to reach the public if you’re not careful about it. You need to know who you are talking to. I think there are times no matter what your opinion might be, no matter who you are talking to, you just keep it to yourself.”

Even the ever-quotable Jacobsen, never one to shy from a microphone, thought Williams was in breach of his unspoken bond with Tiger. “We’ve all said, done things we regret. We’ve all said things in a joking manner that have backfired. He also might’ve made a comment off the cuff that didn’t have the desired impact that it was meant to have. But it goes to show you how important the relationship is between the player and the caddy and the trust a player has to have in a caddy and vice-versa. It becomes such an important relationship — one of trust.”

Apparently Tiger trusts Williams to just head on down the road with his lips sealed and a big job to do — help his man rescue a flailing, recession-riddled Tour (and golffollowing public, for that matter) from the doldrums that set in almost immediately after last year’s epic U.S. Open, when Tiger hung ’em up to deal with his knee. And no doubt Tiger has laid down the law with Williams in private as he prepares to return to competition in a big way, most likely at The Masters but possibly as early as the Accenture Match Play Championship. So Williams will hang around like a well-heeled brand of caddyshack cigarette smoke, carrying a whiff of notoriety that he’d just as soon shed, though if by some quirk of fate his guy and Mickelson are teamed up soon — Masters Sunday, perhaps? — the media will stoke that smoke into a brief flash of headline flame. They can’t help themselves. Heck, I can’t help myself.

But back to caddies in general, including suddenly high-profile guys like Achatz. His story is as tasty as any on Tour: Little more than a year ago he was hustling for tips as a waiter and caddying at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif. — ironically, the site for Tiger’s annual invitational tournament. Mediate invited him to take his bag at Phoenix, where they made the cut, and again at Riviera. The job was his, and four months later he and a rejuvenated Rocco, who had qualified for the Open as an alternate at literally the last possible minute, were strolling up the first fairway in a Monday playoff with Tiger and Stevie, on the cusp of pulling off one of the biggest upsets in golf history. We all know the story from there: Mediate quickly went 1-down and found himself three shots behind after 10 holes. Then came The Comeback, the key to which was just staying loose and not letting Tiger get into Rocco’s head.

“That was simple,” Achatz said during the ADT call. “Tiger doesn’t have anything to do with how we’re going to hit the golf ball. How we’re going to putt. How we’re going to play the golf course. So, to us, it didn’t matter what Tiger did. We just wanted to keep playing a golf course, and Rocco felt that if he could beat the golf course that day, we could win the U.S. Open. We almost did. I think we shot par and that was good enough, to force a 19th hole.”

And now, at 45, Mediate is a reborn Tour star and Achatz’s job is solid, at least for now, though sometimes he

still can’t believe it. “The whole experience has changed everything,” he said. “I was in debt $50,000 from school loans and playing mini tours, and now that’s gone. It’s amazing even just going back to my home town. So many people come up to me and say, congratulations, great job, that was amazing. Coming in second in the U.S. Open is much better than getting a 14-top on a Friday night at a busy restaurant. And I have more free time; I’m able to do things that I never was able to do. You know I’m not working seven nights a week, and I’m not caddying seven days a week, either.”

Still, I’ve got to believe that all those long weeks lugging sticks for Sherwood members by day and taking steak ’n’ potato orders by night set Achatz up to be a first-rate caddy on the world’s biggest golf stage. And I also think back to all the loopers I’ve encountered in my travels from Bandon to Pebble Beach to Las Vegas. They put their much-honed knack for sizing up a player’s game into action right away, from the first tee shot, though they may have never seen him or her before. They know the lay of the land and quickly discern the content of one’s character. The best ones know when to step in with a pep talk, a tension-breaking joke, a quick compliment … or when to just clean the clubs, rake the bunkers and hold their tongues.

Me, I prefer a caddy who cracks me up constantly, who knocks me down a few pegs, brings me back to reality and somehow stokes my wobbly powers of focus. I think that’s what Achatz does for Rocco, already one of the loosest guys out there. And yeah, I see Steve Williams getting Tiger to laugh when he feels he needs to. Maybe that’s how he escaped getting a pink slip in December.

That said, I’d like to let Tiger know I’m available. I’ve long harbored a secret desire to caddy, so why not aim high? And he can count on me to keep my opinions of other players firmly locked away. Besides, I love Phil.

Published in FG Magazine, March 2009