Caddie's Role: There was talk last week of whether Clive Woodward, the ex-England rugby coach, would be able to bring his rugby coaching skills across to the round ball game.
He learnt his coaching largely from bringing his knowledge as a player at the highest level to the training ground. It is undisputed that he has a very fine eye for detail. It is equally well known he had a large budget at his disposal. The question that sprung to my mind about jumping from one game to another at a high level was more related to changing roles within the one sport.
The number of specialists within the game of golf is increasing. It is not uncommon for a top player to have a physiotherapist, a personal trainer, a psychologist, a swing coach, a manager and a caddie with him and sometimes all assembled together in the one week.
A rugby manager, like a soccer manager, will delegate coaching of forward play and defensive play to specialists. Likewise, fitness will be dealt with by specialists.
So it is with golf, certain areas are left to those who are supposed to know best. What confuses me about most of the psychologists that work within the professional golf world is they didn't know a putter from an umbrella when they first skulked around the back of the range in seach of mental cripples to heal. There are many skeptics about Woodward's credentials for crossing what most feel is the uncrossable divide between rugby and soccer. With the budgets of some Premiership clubs it would be hard for a manager with nothing more than the most fundamental understanding of human nature to finish outside the upper end of the league table with an abundance of very expensive stars at his disposal. Money does not buy talent in golf - it can purchase good advice, though .
It was always a mystery to me as a caddie with half a lifetime of hands-on observation of golfers behaving badly under pressure, how these mind men could empathise with the struggling golfer. Perhaps their distance from the sport originally was an advantage in the sense that they had no understanding of the unique emotions that a pro-active game brings out in you. Too much time to ponder can have a negative effect on many people.
I do not know much about Woodward, apart from the fact that he was the first to bring northern hemisphere rugby out of the commitment and camaraderie stage and into the complete professional frame. He raised every aspect of the English rugby team's standards very successfully.
Tiger Woods could be compared to him in the sense that he raised the bar in a complacent profession in the mid to late 90s to the dizzy heights so many more golfers now aspire to. For one season many players contemplated not playing in events he was entered for, because if he was playing they felt they were playing for second.
His dominance has receded from virtually guaranteed winner to serious challenger. His philosophy prevails, however - physical and mental fitness must accompany natural talent. You cannot rely on talent alone like so many of the champions of old may be accused of doing.
Mobility within the golf tours is taking a certain course. Many players who have had enough of chasing the tour dream throttle back to the cushy, less rewarding but equally less stressful number of working as tour officials. Others move to commentating. Some become coaches and more recently, particularly in the States, move to the other side of the bag as caddies. Others have joined management teams. With the increased money in all sports, the need has been created for specialists with a knowledge of the game but bringing also a different perspective.
Moving on to the bagman. There are no qualifications for a caddie. The Swedes, God bless them, came up with a two-day caddie crash course a few years back, but it has not caught on. St Andrews University has a course in golf which touches on caddying. But really, the only way to gain knowledge is to get out and do it. How you get the chance to do that in an increasingly popular profession is easier said than done. Up to a dozen caddies on the US Tour have come from the players' ranks - the increasing purses have lifted the stigma from carrying the bag of one of the better pros.
However, I have noticed a certain attitude which some of these downsized players have brought with them to the other side of the bag - a bit like aspiring actors in Los Angeles laden with attitude about waiting tables while they are really waiting for a Hollywood movie break.
The skills that ex-players, psychologists, physios and others can bring to caddying are all subsequently valuable to a player. After all, caddying is fundamentally about giving your player what he needs and not always wants at the appropriate time. We are physical labourers, psychologists, strategists and advisors. The more experience you have the more specialised you become in each of the required categories within bag-toting.
The fundamental requirement is to advise and not really decide. This is the player's duty. Advising means having a greater influence over how your boss plays, so there is no doubt the caddie's role is ever broadening.
Whether we will ever see a top caddie move over to an advisory role in some other sport remains to be seen. Tiger Woods' caddie could impart much of Tiger's mental and physical strategy to other sportsmen if he decided to give up caddying. If the astute toter documents and categorises his/her experience of top players and their approach to managing both themselves and their games I am sure he/she would have a lot to offer in other sports.
Getting the chance to gain the confidence of players within another sport may not prove to be so easy. So the question remains: what soccer player would respect and be motivated by the opinion of a specialist from another profession, unless like hair-bands or silver boots, it became a whimsical fashion de rigeur? Maybe Woodward is about to start a revolution in the management of soccer.
