It started out as a student job but 20 years on, and with a second book under his belt, Colin Byrne is a major presence in the caddie shack. PHILIP REIDreports...
IT’S OVER two decades since Colin Byrne entered the bear pit, that world occupied by caddies. He was young, a little naive if the truth be known, and the reason for seeking a bag in the first place was an entirely selfish one: he wanted to travel.
It had nothing to do with making money, or forging a career. The job in the stock exchange or the bank (or wherever someone with a business degree went in those far off days for employment) was simply put on the back-burner.
The thing is, that plan, such as it was, simmered and ultimately disappeared. The nomadic life that Byrne embarked on found a part of him that, deep down, he knew was always there. A calling? A vocation? Nothing as grand as that; but there was something about scraping for a living as he did in those early days and going by plane or train or automobile to wherever professional golf tournaments would take him that slowly and surely sucked him in. By accident, rather than design, he became a bagman.
The lure of the fairways for a single-handicapper from Royal Dublin had started out as a means to an end. “I wanted to travel, as simple as that. I enjoyed golf, but I wasn’t obsessed by it. I was doing it to fulfil a desire to travel,” recounts Byrne.
In those early days, Byrne shared a battered old Volkswagen van with another caddie to travel from place to place, tournament to tournament. It was more than a mode of transport, it sometimes doubled as a mobile hotel. And such was the contraption’s unreliability that Byrne and his pal would always park it on the top of a hill just in case it wouldn’t start in the morning. It made the job of pushing it a little easier.
Byrne’s business acumen back then was used for basic things. Like survival. “Understanding the difference between plus or minus was pretty important. Am I broke or can I get to the next event? I mean, it was a bit of a novelty back then. At first, other caddies were like, ‘who is this guy?’. It was a big initiation period, like it would be for anyone in any walk of life, and the older caddies weren’t exactly relishing the idea of a new guy stamping on their territory. I didn’t expect to be welcomed with open arms. You serve your time, and you find people you like to hang out with. That’s how it works.”
The initial idea was for Byrne to caddie for a few years and to see some of the world. Europe, Africa, Asia. “It was supposed to last until I wasn’t eligible any more for student fares when I was 26 . . . somehow, somewhere along the way, I thought I might as well extend it, to stretch the winters out . . . . and, then, I broke my rule. I went beyond 26 and along came Tiger Woods and everyone started making a living out of golf. I went from pretty much trying to survive to realising if you got the right player, you could make a living out of it.”
Those days of sometimes not knowing where the next meal would come from, of living, as he put it, “hand to mouth,” are long gone. He has carried for the great and the good, whispered yardages on the home stretch of the final round of a Major on a Sunday and kept calm and collected when it mattered most.
He has toured with players like Greg Turner and Retief Goosen and, his current employer, Alex Noren and these days there is an extra spring in his step as he mentors the young Swedish player who has oodles of talent and a listening ear.
THE ROLE OFthe caddie has stayed the same, but how the caddie is perceived has changed. The days of being excluded from clubhouses have gone; and, this week, in the Dubai World Championship over The Earth course in the Jumeirah estate in this desert emirate, the proof of how the lot of the caddie has improved is evident: flowers on the tables in the caddie shack, plush beige leather lounge chairs and waitress service dishing out food and beverages. "We rise on a higher tide, the money (in golf) has increased and people are paying more attention to what we do," observes Byrne.
Anyone on the outside looking in who wants to know just how the lot of the caddie has changed need only look at Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’s bagman. He is frequently referred to as the highest-paid sportsman in New Zealand, so rich have been the pickings of carrying the world’s number one’s bag.
Byrne doesn't go along with that. "Of course it is untrue because caddying is not a sport, it is a profession." It's a profession that Byrne – a weekly columnist with The Irish Timeswhose latest book Bagman 2is now on general release – has become an integral part of, a fresh enthusiasm for the job provided by working with his latest charge. "I'm institutionalised now, it would be very hard to do something else," he concedes.
In this game, the tales from the caddie shack take no prisoners. Byrne, with his clean-cut image and reputation as one of the top caddies, a role model for those starting out, isn’t immune from the stories of past deeds. Like the time he arrived in China for a tournament without a visa and had to spend days in Hong Kong sorting out the oversight before joining his man at the tournament, or the times back in the early days of bag-carrying when he was part of a two-man venture that drew up course guides to sell to other caddies.
In competition with another course “cartographer” who happened to go by the name of “Irish,” Byrne and his business acquaintance discovered they could outwit their rival by gaining access into the area around the carousels at airports and flogging their guides to arriving caddies before they got to the course.
Caddying is a school of hard knocks, with no formal training. You have to learn fast to survive, and to be thick-skinned.
“There’s no caddy school, no formal training. You just have to get out there and do it. There is always something to learn.
“You’re trying to eliminate surprises, but there’s always surprises . . . you’ve got to cover all angles. They don’t want any mysteries, Agatha Christies. What you’re trying to do is to avoid getting shocked, and avoid shocking your player. They don’t want to hear a don’t know or a maybe, it has to be a definite. They don’t want to hear any hesitation.
“Your job is to give accurate advice, and it is up to the player to make the decision.”
It all comes down to preparation, not only spending hours upon hours with the player – on the range, on the putting green, on the course – but early morning and late evening reconnaissance of the course. Like in Dubai this week. An example: Byrne spend almost an hour, on his own, assessing the 18th hole, a par five with a creek that literally runs straight up the middle of the fairway.
How would he describe the art of caddying?
“We are dilettantes, we do a bit of everything. You’re cleaning shoes, but you’re also trying to figure out how they are thinking and trying to get them thinking better. You’re very much a jack of all trades. There are different relationships evident between player and caddie. Some of the older guys are looking for a servant first and a caddie second.
“To me, the younger guys have more respect. It could be an age thing. I’m old enough to be Alex’s father so maybe there is some sort of subconscious respect. But, from own personal experience, a lot of the younger players are looking for a companion, a mentor. You’ve still got to carry the bag and do all the basics, but they’re looking for a bit more. There’s a change of mentality among the younger guys.”
Byrne has been criss-crossing timelines around the globe for two and a half decades. There have been times he has reached the point of burnout, pointing out that caddies need more than seven days in a week. But the hunger to contribute, to do the job and enjoy it, has never waned. Teaming-up with Noren this season has also had a rejuvenating effect. And, what’s more, he still gets to marvel – up-close – at the shots that these tour players conjure up time and time again.
Institutionalised he may be, but the man from Howth wouldn’t have it any other way.
“What you’re trying to do is to avoid getting shocked, and avoid shocking your player. They don’t want to hear a don’t know or a maybe, it has to be a definite. They don’t want to hear any hesitation.
