My second tournament on the bag for Tyce took us to Bowood for the PGA Wiltshire Open. This time I knew the course, although my first piece of local knowledge didn’t exactly go according to plan.
Event: PGA Wiltshire Open (OOM)
Course: Bowood Golf & CC, Calne
Date: 15 September 2025
Player: Chris “Tyce” Tyson PGA
Caddie: Steve King
Format: 18-hole individual stroke play
Course Setup: White tees – 6,844 yards, Par 72
Score: 83 (+11)
Result: T58
Events Together: 2
Tournament Rounds Together: 2
Official Results: PGA/BlueGolf Leaderboard
Before the First Tee
A few weeks after my first tournament on the bag at High Post, Tyce and I were back out again.
This time it was the PGA Wiltshire Open at Bowood.
There was one fairly important difference.
I’d played Bowood before.
At High Post I’d arrived at a golf course I’d never seen and therefore had virtually no course knowledge to offer Tyce. Bowood was different. I knew the general shape of the holes, some of the lines from the tees and where particular positions could leave a better lie or angle for the next shot.
Only one event into my caddying career, I finally had some local knowledge to contribute.
This could only go well.
Warming Up at Bowood
I still have some of the footage from the day.
Before the round I recorded Tyce warming up on the practice ground, and during the tournament I took a number of short clips from around the course.
I originally combined them into a short montage shortly after the event. I’ve since gone back to the original video, changed the music and added it to the Weekend Golfers YouTube channel.
Looking back at the footage has also helped jog my memory about the day.
One thing I’d forgotten was quite how windy it was.
Bowood was playing 6,844 yards from the white tees, which is enough golf course without having a strong wind to contend with as well.
The scoring across the field reflected that. Nobody broke par, with level-par 72 enough to lead the tournament.
Knowing the Course – In Theory
Having played Bowood before, I could give Tyce some guidance from the opening tee.
I knew the fairway could feed the ball from left to right, so I suggested favouring the left side and allowing the contours to help move the ball towards the middle of the fairway.
Tyce followed the line.
Straight into a bunker.
Worse still, the ball finished under the lip.
There was no sensible shot towards the green, so Tyce had little choice but to play backwards simply to get the ball out.
He eventually made seven on the par-four first.
So, after Tyce had shot 80 in my first tournament round at High Post, my first significant contribution of local knowledge at Bowood had helped produce a triple bogey at the opening hole.
The partnership was developing nicely.
In fairness to me, knowing where you want the ball to finish and actually getting it there are two entirely different things.
In fairness to Tyce, he didn’t sack me.
On the Bag
Although the first hole hadn’t provided the most convincing demonstration of my value, knowing Bowood did mean I could contribute more during the rest of the round.
I could help with lines, yardages and positioning while continuing with the more practical parts of the job I’d started learning at High Post.
We were still only on tournament round number two together.
There wasn’t a detailed system for how we worked. Much of it was still unspoken and something we were learning as we went along.
That included knowing when Tyce wanted an opinion and when he didn’t.
The putting side of our partnership was also beginning to develop. Tyce knew putting was a strength of mine and would occasionally ask me to have a look at a line when he wanted another pair of eyes.
There was still a long way to go before we really understood how best to work together, but Bowood was another round towards getting there.
The Golf
The opening triple put Tyce on the back foot immediately.
What the final score doesn’t show particularly well is that he then settled down.
After making seven at the first, Tyce played holes 2 through 12 in only three over par.
There were plenty of pars in there and, despite the strong wind, he kept the round together rather than allowing one bad opening hole to turn into a succession of them.
Another difficult spell came later, including a double bogey at the 13th and bogeys at 16 and 18.
Tyce eventually signed for 83 (+11).
It wasn’t the score we’d have wanted, but it was also a difficult day at Bowood. Level par was enough to lead the tournament and scores throughout the field stretched well into the 80s.
What I Took From Bowood
The obvious lesson from Bowood would be:
Don’t listen to your caddie on the first tee.
But I think there was something more useful than that.
For the first time, I could see how my own experience of a golf course might help Tyce.
That didn’t mean telling a PGA Professional how to hit a golf ball.
It meant giving him information.
I could tell him how I’d seen a fairway react, where I thought a useful line was, what was around a corner or which side might leave the better position.
Tyce could then decide what he wanted to do with that information.
Sometimes it would work.
Occasionally we’d end up under the lip of a bunker playing backwards.
That’s golf.
I also saw again how important it is to move on from a bad hole.
Starting with a triple bogey could easily have ruined the round. Instead, Tyce played the next eleven holes in three over.
The seven was already on the card. There wasn’t much point spending the next four hours being annoyed about it.
The Result
Tyce shot 83 (+11) to finish T58 in the PGA Wiltshire Open.
His scorecard contained nine pars, six bogeys, two double bogeys and one triple bogey.
Unfortunately, we got the triple out of the way nice and early.
Level-par 72 was the winning score, which gives some context to how difficult Bowood played that day. Tyce’s official scorecard and the complete tournament leaderboard are available through the PGA/BlueGolf link at the top of this post.
Final Thoughts
High Post had been about discovering whether I could be useful to Tyce at all.
Bowood felt slightly different.
I knew the course. I could contribute some local knowledge and we were beginning to work out how the relationship between player and caddie might actually work.
Admittedly, my first bit of course knowledge resulted in a triple bogey.
But Tyce kept me around.
Two events down.
Two tournament rounds together.
And somehow I was going to get another go.
Caddying for Chris Series
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