Let's take a closer look at the world of golf's caddies.
Steve Williams’ ludicrous complaints about Tiger Woods treating him like “a slave” during their dozen years together is the kind of sensationalist claptrap that gets caddies a bad name.
No self respecting member of the bag-toting fraternity that was once charged with merely showing up, keeping up and shutting up could ever describe earning more than $10.5m (€9.6m)on the back of helping a golfing genius win 13 of his 14 majors as anything even remotely close to the story of “12 Years A Slave.”
Williams’ recently published book, Out of the Rough, has been widely-panned a missed opportunity to shed some light on what really went on in Woods’ golfing genius brain during that amazing 1999-2011 period.
In a sense, Williams is the perfect subject for a book about a profession that has been utterly transformed during the Woods era.
A figure that was once capable of describing himself jocosely as a “Wind and Yardage Consultant,” frequently rising like the living dead from a pile of caddie bodies (12 to a room) to stagger (hungover) to the course is a dying breed.
The game is becoming so lucrative now that caddies are regarded as an integral part of “the team” and expected to act accordingly.
Williams was the highest paid New Zealand ‘sportsman’ at the height of his career because he was remarkably good at a job that is far more than the sum of its parts.
The world’s toughest jobs might include occupations such as salt miner, killer bee remover and alligator wrangler.
But professional caddie is up there in terms of mental stress. As a result, the rewards are tremendous for the most successful exponents of a trade that is part horse-whisperer, part donkey, part mathematician and all guile and cunning.
“They are all on a par, those jobs,” Billy Foster once told me with a chuckle when he was back on the bag of the tempestuous Darren Clarke. “Some players get on the caddie when the caddie doesn’t deserve it but he has always been fair.
“He just expects you to give 100% and I try to never give anything less than 100%. We all make mistakes and I am big enough to stand up and accept the odd mistake, but he knows I try my best every week.”
A plain-talking Yorkshireman, Foster has a rhinoceros-like skin after toting the clubs for employers such as Seve Ballesteros and Thomas Bjorn.
But his relationship with Clarke went beyond mere work, as it did for Alastair MacLean and Colin Montgomerie and still does for Jim Furyk and Mike “Fluff” Cowan, or Phil Mickelson and Jim “Bones” Mackay.
“I never stopped biting his head off all the way round,” Foster said of one of his last days with Clarke, long before he won the Open.
“I was saying to him: We’re sick of losing, we’re sick of losing. Do me a favour today. Do it for yourself and do it for me. I want you to shoot the lowest round of the day.
“Sometimes it is difficult to gee him up and you have to be a bit of a Jack Russell and keep gnarling at him.”
Myles Byrne’s extra driver cock up at The Open at Royal Lytham and St Annes in 2001 cost Ian Woosnam his chance of winning the Claret Jug and brought home all those worst nightmare scenarios that keep caddies awake at night.
They are an eclectic bunch that hail from all walks of life from ex tradesman, policemen or teachers to bankers (such as Pádraig Harrington’s Ronan Flood) or third level graduates, such as Ernie Els’ sometime-caddie Colin Byrne.
Jason Day’s caddie, Col Swatton is also his swing coach, friend and mental guru and while many caddies are looking for and living the jetset lifestyle without the jet, or the cash, the new breed of successful jockeys are better prepared and more professional than ever.
Naturally, with such huge rewards on offer in the modern game, they are also prepared to put up with huge levels of abuse.
Good humour helps, though nobody is going to reach the level attained by a legendary Irish caddie back at the dawn of the profession.
“You have to be the worst caddie in the entire world,” a frustrated hacker muttered to his faithful sidekick after a particularly tough day on an Irish links.
“I don’t think so, sir,” replied the bagman. “That would be too much of a coincidence.”
Former US Open winner Geoff Ogilvy wrote for Golf Australia of his guilt at the way he sometimes treated his caddies.
His piece came just days after an utterly fed up Mick Middlemo dumped employer Robert Allenby, who has admitted to having employed 24 caddies so far, in the middle of the Canadian Open.
“I have to be honest,” Ogilvy wrote. “There have been times during my career when my behaviour towards my caddie has been less than ideal. I’ve never been directly rude, but I’ve certainly let my self down occasionally. All close relationships have moments like that. And the one between player and caddie is no different in that respect.
“Almost every player has a different idea of why the caddie is there in the first place. Some guys think the guy on the bag just has to carry the clubs and keep them clean. Other players think the caddie is a psychologist, swing coach, club selector and yardage calculator in one. Then there are the majority of players, who sit in the middle of those two extremes.”
Ogilvy is fascinated by what is known as caddie-bashing when he admits that what he wants more often than not is not bald honesty but “the right thing.” “I’ve heard guys say, ‘You wanted me to hit that ball in the trees.’ Or, ‘You wanted me to miss that green,’ which is hilarious. But it happens all the time.”
The agent Chubby Chandler always said that Rory McIlroy’s man JP Fitzgerald might not be the best caddie in the world but, “he’s the best caddie in the world for Rory.”
Learning what to say and when to say it can make a caddie very rich indeed, as a recent list of top five highest paid caddies recently revealed.
In 2014, Forbes Magazine calculate that 10 caddies on the PGA Tour earned at least $600,000 (€551,000), made up of their regular wage, 8% of their winnings and 10% of a win.
Based on those figures and Jordan Spieth’s $21m (€19.3m) 2015 season, his caddie Michael Greller has likely pulled in close to $2m (€1.8m) this year.
“Sports Cheat Sheet” recently calculated that based on last year, Mark Fulcher (Justin Rose) earned $720,000 (€662,000), with Gareth Lord (Henrik Stenson) taking in $725,000 (€666,000), Ted Scott (Bubba Watson) $900,000 (€827,000), Fitzgerald (McIlroy) $1.48m (€1.36m) and Micah Fugitt (caddie for FedExCup winner Billy Horschel) some $1.57m (€1.44m).
European Tour caddies are a fun bunch with names like The Seagull, The Lip, DVD John, The Brain, The Ferrret and The Elbow.
But when one of them saw his player pull off a particularly fortuitous shot to set up a $1m-plus pay day, he confessed that just one thing crossed his mind in that moment of caddying glory: “Mortgage. Gone.”
They might be part of the team and more serious than ever but like the golfers, their lives are governed my numbers and the only number in town is the total in the bank.
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