Caddie's Role:There are sports that are sometimes best played when you are a little fired up or angry. Some team sports may entail a rousing speech from the captain or manager before competition. From team ball-games to athletics there are a bundle of games where you can vent some anger successfully during competition, writes Colin Byrne.
This tends not to be the case with golf where tranquil, monotonous Zen-like behaviour is required for the optimum performance. If you get aggressive the chances are you are going to get even more upset as you hit more errant shots. The best advice you could give a golfer under pressure is to stay cool and take your time.
Thus lies the great conundrum of the peaceful and ballet-like serenity of golf; what do you do when you get really hacked off with how your round is going? As pedestrian a sport as golf may appear it has the potential to ignite a raging inferno in the most unlikely of candidates.
The game has the capability of turning mice into monsters once they put on their golf shoes. The constant challenge for us all is how to contain this emotion and somehow channel it as a positive force. For a professional who is put to the test four times a week the chances for blowing a fuse are greatly increased.
I am not suggesting adopting any of the methods I am about to mention to those level-headed golfers amongst you who are overwhelmed by the joy of being free from the office and out in the open air chasing your golf ball round the links. But having observed some of the world's best golfers and the world's most notorious ragers I can recommend a few valves of release when you next feel the tension rising on the track.
Caddying can be a perilous job; there is very little job security and you are very much relying on your player's talent for your living. On a day-to-day basis it can be particularly dangerous. One of the first players I caddied for told me the only rule he suggested I pay particular attention to was to keep my hands away from the golf bag after he had hit a bad shot - because the club was liable to come flying back in the direction of the bag or be hurled back into the bag at full force. It was an invaluable piece of advice as he hit a litany of bad shots and followed them with the back-up he had warned me was most likely.
This was in the days before the abundance of television cameras and a dearth of spectators at most European events, so the chances of being seen or offending spectators was slim.
Of course bad behaviour should not be encouraged. With the advent of sports psychologists and the excess of them now, it's widely agreed it is best not to drag your anger around the 18 holes with you, it should be released as promptly as possible. Many top players have mastered the art of cursing with their back to the camera or whacking some innocent object out of view of the spectators. There is no doubt some release is required and part of your professionalism is knowing how to do so without getting caught.
The bag and the caddie are probably first in line for abuse after a bad shot. Tee markers are also in a precarious place. Last week in Cologne, the markers were big wooden blocks with the Mercedes-Benz logo adorning them. I don't know the details, but one of the markers on the 16th tee had been disfigured to the extent you could almost identify which iron had been embedded in it.
The unofficial tales in the caddie shack of "head-offs" are endless and if the recipient of the assault is a tee marker then the story cannot be contained for long. I have heard of players biting themselves in anger so deeply they drew blood. You could tell one player's putting round by the red lines on his forehead where he whacked himself for missing putts he thought he should have holed. I have helped an embarrassed Australian golfer search in a rice-field for a driver he hurled surprisingly far in anger.
A colleague had his camera, which was in the golf bag, broken by a vexed player's club. Another had to dive into the bag to pull out a coke can which had been pierced in a blow from a six iron causing it to burst. Another player took to a golf bag which he though was his and as he was busy demolishing it was interrupted by his playing partner, the actual owner, who had the same brand of bag. The original rager of the modern game, Tommy Bolt, ended one round with only one club usable in his bag.
A South African threw his whole bag into a pond after a poor round. As he strode to his car he realised he had left his keys in the bag. So he fished it out, retrieved the keys and threw the bag back in. An American reversed his car over his offending clubs after he missed the cut. He pulled forward and reversed over them a second time in case he didn't break them all in the initial crunch and pulled out of the car-park leaving a wake of dust.
One American golfer started to demolish his Ping bag and as he finished his disapproving caddie pointed out that due to him leaving a hole where the "n" had been it now spelt "PIG".
A good friend of mine, in his usual calm style of caddying, once placed his player's bag in front of his player's ball on one fairway during a tournament and said he would not move the bag until he calmed down. The fuming player responded: "Do you not think I can get my ball through the bag?."
The same player begged the same caddie to reveal where he had hidden his clubs after a bad round. As he calmed down he pleaded to let him have just one of the clubs to break.
Caddying can be a perilous job and gauging if to respond to a raging player could be defusing or not only comes with experience. When one seasoned looper was asked by his player, "Give me something to break", he tersely replied, "How about par."
