I never really set out to become a caddie. Chris Tyson was my golf coach at Westbury Golf Club, and over time we got to know each other through coaching, playing golf and various projects around the club. Then an opportunity came along to join him during a PGA tournament at High Post Golf Club.
Tyce had already played the first round and I joined him for round two. At the time, I don’t think either of us thought it was necessarily the beginning of anything. I was going to be on his bag, help where I could and see how we got on.
It turned out I really enjoyed it. I must have been reasonably useful too, because we did it again.
And then again.
Somewhere along the way, rather than simply helping Tyce by being on his bag, I became his regular tournament caddie.
Why I Started Caddying for Chris
There is an important part of this story that explains why having a caddie can be particularly useful for Chris.
Chris has Long Covid. When he’s physically feeling good, he’s a very good golfer, and I’ve now seen enough of his tournament golf from close range to know the standard he’s capable of producing.
There are also days when his body simply doesn’t give him everything he needs.
That’s a particularly difficult situation for a professional golfer because understanding what shot is required and physically being able to produce it aren’t always the same thing.
Tyce understands his game and knows what he’s trying to do, but sometimes part of the challenge is managing what his body will allow him to do on that particular day.
Having somebody else on the bag helps Tyce conserve energy, although in our case that doesn’t literally mean carrying it, he uses a PowaKaddy.
Looking after the bag, clubs and everything else still leaves him with one less thing to think about, and as we’ve done more tournaments together I’ve realised that’s only one part of the job anyway.
Learning How to Work Together
I’m a reasonably experienced golfer myself, but caddying for somebody else is very different from playing your own ball.
I’m not there to coach Tyce. He’s the PGA Professional and, somewhat importantly, he’s also the person who coaches me.
What I can do is provide another pair of eyes and gradually build an understanding of his game. That might mean getting yardages, checking the wind, discussing a club, looking at a putting line or talking through where the trouble is and what we’re trying to achieve with a particular shot.
There are also times when the most useful thing I can do is say absolutely nothing.
I think that’s one of the things I’ve gradually become better at.
The more events we’ve done together, the more we’ve learnt how the other person works. I’m getting to know Chris’s distances, tendencies and the shots he likes to see. I’m learning when he wants another opinion, when a conversation might help and when he has already made his decision and just needs to get on with hitting the golf ball.
Tyce, presumably, is also learning which pieces of my advice are worth listening to.
We’re both still working on that one.
One Goal for Every Round
Despite everything that can happen during a tournament round, the objective for both of us is actually very simple.
Get the lowest score Tyce can shoot that day.
That doesn’t necessarily mean playing perfect golf or even playing particularly well.
Some days everything works. Other days it doesn’t. Courses ask different questions, the weather changes, swings don’t always cooperate and putts that look as though they’re going in somehow decide otherwise. Good shots occasionally get terrible bounces and questionable shots occasionally turn out considerably better than either of us deserves.
Tyce’s energy can vary as well, so whatever game he has available when we reach the first tee is the game we work with.
If he’s playing well, my job is to help him keep going without getting in the way. If he’s struggling, there may be more opportunities for me to help with decisions, keep things moving and make sure we’re concentrating on the next shot rather than something that happened three holes earlier.
The number we’re aiming for isn’t decided before we start.
We just want the lowest one available that day.
Seeing Professional Golf From a Different Perspective
I’ve played competitive amateur golf for years, but caddying has given me a completely different view of the game.
You’re watching very good golfers from a few yards away rather than from behind a rope or on television, and one of the first things you discover is that professional golfers hit bad shots too.
Quite a lot of them, actually.
What tends to be more interesting is what happens afterwards.
You get to see how good players react when something goes wrong, how they manage their way around a course when they don’t have their best game and how much thought goes into shots that can look relatively straightforward from the outside.
I’ve also found the team aspect fascinating.
When I’m playing my own golf, I’m responsible for everything. I’m thinking about my swing, my score, my handicap, my putting and whichever new experiment I’ve decided to inflict on myself that week.
When I’m caddying, none of that matters.
For those few hours, there’s only one golf score we’re interested in.
It Started at High Post
The first time I joined Chris on the bag was for the second round of a PGA event at High Post Golf Club.
At that point I didn’t know that I’d eventually be travelling around with him to PGA events at courses around the country. I certainly didn’t know that I’d end up keeping enough photographs, videos, WhatsApp messages, tournament results and other bits and pieces to reconstruct most of what we’ve done.
But that’s what happened.
One event became another and, as we’ve spent more time together, I think we’ve become a pretty good team.
We’ve had very early starts, long drives and long days. We’ve played in beautiful weather and some considerably less beautiful weather. We’ve seen some excellent golf, some difficult golf and plenty in between.
I’ve made mistakes. Chris has made mistakes. We’ve made decisions that worked brilliantly and others that looked rather less clever once the ball had landed. That’s tournament golf. And I’ve loved being part of it.
Going Back to the Beginning
I’ve decided to go back through everything I’ve kept and document every event I’ve caddied for Chris, starting with that first round together at High Post.
Some events will probably produce long articles because a lot happened. Others may be much shorter because there simply isn’t as much of a story to tell. I don’t want to manufacture drama or pretend that every tournament taught me some profound new lesson about golf.
Sometimes we simply went somewhere, Tyce played golf and I was on the bag.
But collectively I think the individual events will become something much more interesting.
They’ll be a record of the courses we’ve visited, the tournaments Chris has played, the good rounds and the difficult ones, and hopefully how we’ve developed together as player and caddie.
I’ve got the official results, contemporary WhatsApp messages and a surprisingly large collection of photographs and videos to work through, so we should be able to reconstruct most of it fairly accurately.
There will undoubtedly be photographs proving I was standing somewhere when I have absolutely no recollection of what happened next.
We’ll deal with those when we get to them.
The Caddying Diary
High Post will be the first entry.
From there I’ll work through every event in order and gradually bring the story up to date. Future tournaments can then be added as they happen rather than disappearing into my phone along with several thousand other golf photographs.
I don’t know where the caddying will eventually take us or how many events we’ll end up doing together, but I do know that we’ve become better at working together the more we’ve done it, and I hope that continues.
The objective won’t change.
Whatever golf Chris brings to the course that day, we’ll do our best to get the lowest score we can out of it.
Then we’ll pack the bag, head home and get ready to do it all again at the next one.
