My third event on the bag for Tyce took us to Cotswold Hills for two rounds of PGA tournament golf, where strong winds made an already long golf course considerably more difficult.
CADDYING FOR CHRIS
Event: Chrome Tour Open Series 2026 Open Series (West)
Course: Cotswold Hills Golf Club, Cheltenham
Date: 28–29 April 2026
Player: Chris “Tyce” Tyson PGA
Caddie: Steve King
Format: 36-hole stroke play
Course Setup: Black tees 7,128 yards, Par 72
Score: 80 (+8), 80 (+8) 160 (+16)
Result: T109
Events Together: 3
Tournament Rounds Together: 4
Official Results: PGA/BlueGolf leaderboard
Before the First Tee
Cotswold Hills was my third event on the bag for Tyce.
High Post had been my introduction to caddying for a PGA Professional. Bowood was the first time I’d been able to bring some course knowledge to the job, although sending Tyce towards a bunker on the first hole hadn’t been the most convincing demonstration of my value.
Apparently I still hadn’t put him off.
Next up was Cotswold Hills for the PGA Open Series, and this was another step for us because it would be the first time I’d caddied for Tyce throughout a two-round tournament.
It was also a proper test.
Cotswold Hills was playing 7,128 yards from the black tees. That’s plenty of golf course before the weather decides it wants to become involved.
The weather became involved.
Strong winds were a feature of both days. It was cold, with spells of sunshine and some rain thrown in for good measure.
Keeping Westbury Members Updated
By this point I’d set up and was running the Westbury Pro Shop WhatsApp group.
Before the tournament I told everyone that Tyce was playing and that I was on the bag. I’d try to keep everyone updated where I could, without getting in the way of actually caddying.
At the time I was simply keeping people at the club interested in how Tyce was getting on.
I wasn’t thinking that I’d eventually go back through those messages and videos to reconstruct these events for Weekend Golfers.
I’m rather glad I did it.
On the Bag
I’d completed precisely two tournament rounds as Tyce’s caddie when we arrived at Cotswold Hills.
I was still learning.
My job wasn’t to start telling a PGA Professional how to play golf. It was to help Tyce shoot the lowest score he could shoot with the game he had that day.
That meant doing the practical things properly, helping with yardages and course information, looking at putts when Tyce wanted another opinion and gradually learning when my input was useful.
It also meant learning when it wasn’t.
That part of caddying would become increasingly important as we did more tournaments together.
I also kept the pin sheet from the second round.
To most people they’re probably just a piece of paper covered in numbers.
To a golf geek who suddenly finds himself inside the ropes at PGA events, apparently they’re souvenirs.
The First Round
The opening round was cold and windy.
Tyce shot 80 (+8).
The other two players in our group returned scores of 80 and 82, while the leader after the opening round was four under par.
So there were certainly better scores available somewhere.
We just weren’t finding many of them in our group.
Still, we had another round the following morning.
And another early start.
Learning From Craig Roberts
One of the things I remember particularly well from Cotswold Hills was watching Craig Roberts hit his irons. I’ve played golf for a long time and I’m a reasonable golfer, but watching a good PGA Professional strike the ball from a few yards away is different. Craig’s ball striking was comfortably better than mine with pretty much every club.
I was particularly impressed by the way Craig hit his wedges. He seemed able to keep the flight down and control the ball in a way I liked, so rather than just watching him do it, I asked him how.
Craig couldn’t have been more helpful. He explained what he was doing and even took some time to demonstrate it for me. It became a little impromptu lesson during the tournament, and more importantly it was something I could understand and take straight back to my own golf.
I put it into practice afterwards and saw an almost immediate benefit. The next time I saw Craig at another PGA event, I was able to tell him that I’d tried what he’d shown me and that it had genuinely helped.
Craig was also very friendly and happy to chat as we walked around. He’s an Aston Villa supporter and Villa’s Europa League final was only a week or so away, which he was obviously looking forward to, so inevitably some of the conversation turned to football.
That’s something I’ve since found happens quite a lot at these events. There is plenty of concentration around the shots, but also plenty of walking between them, and football often fills some of the gaps.
Something else stayed with me from watching Craig. The quality of his ball striking was so good that his eventual scores surprised me. That’s not a criticism, Craig is comfortably a better golfer than I am, but it was another reminder of just how difficult this game is. Even at professional level, hitting great golf shots and turning them into a low tournament score aren’t always the same thing.
With the first round finished, we still had another 18 holes to play the following morning and another early start.
5:17am – Back for Round Two
My first WhatsApp message the following morning was sent at 5:17am.
I was already on the road.
My message was:
“Let’s hope the sun comes out today.”
For once, it listened.
I arrived at Cotswold Hills shortly after 7am and the course looked rather lovely in the sunshine.
Tyce was off at 7:30am from the 10th tee, and I recorded his opening tee shot with the morning sun across the course.
Unfortunately, sunshine and easy golf aren’t the same thing.
The wind got up again and became a major factor.
Tyce came in with another 80 (+8).
This time the other two players in our group shot 86 and 88.
My WhatsApp assessment immediately afterwards was:
“A solid effort in high winds.”
Looking back at those three scores, I think that was fair.
What I Took From Cotswold Hills
Caddying was already reinforcing something that’s very easy to forget when we look at our own scorecards.
The number doesn’t tell you everything.
An 80 is an 80.
But an 80 when the golfers alongside you shoot 86 and 88 tells you rather more about what the golf course and conditions were doing that day.
That’s relevant to my own golf too.
We weekend golfers are quite good at deciding what we should shoot before we’ve taken much notice of the wind, weather, course setup or even the golf swing we’ve brought with us that morning.
Sometimes the sensible target isn’t your handicap, your personal best or whatever number you had in your head in the car park.
Sometimes it’s simply the lowest score you can shoot with the game and conditions you’ve got that day.
That was also becoming the way I thought about my job with Tyce.
The number we wanted wasn’t necessarily the number we thought he ought to shoot before the round.
It was the lowest one we could get on the card that day.
Cotswold Hills on Video
I recorded short clips throughout the tournament and afterwards put them together into a montage.
I’ve now gone back to that original video, re-edited it and added it to the Weekend Golfers YouTube channel as part of my Caddying for Chris Tyson series.
The footage is fairly simple.
I wasn’t trying to make a YouTube production while carrying Tyce’s bag around a PGA tournament. I was just recording bits of what was happening.
That’s probably why I like having it now.
It’s a genuine little record of those two days.
The Result
Tyce shot 80 (+8) in both rounds for a total of 160 (+16).
The second round was played in particularly strong winds, with the other two players in our group returning scores of 86 and 88.
Final position: T109
The complete tournament leaderboard is available through the official PGA/BlueGolf link at the top of this post.
Final Thoughts
By the end of Cotswold Hills, Tyce and I had completed three events and four tournament rounds together.
It still wasn’t a huge amount of experience.
But we were beginning to develop a routine.
I was learning what Tyce wanted from me, when I could contribute and when the best thing I could do was look after the bag and let him get on with playing golf.
I was also learning how early you sometimes have to get out of bed if you volunteer to carry somebody else’s golf clubs around the country.
And there wasn’t much time to dwell on Cotswold Hills.
My final message to the Westbury group was:
“On to Minchinhampton next week🍻”
So that’s where we went.
Caddying for Chris Series
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