At 63, the caddy of them all is still calling the shots

YOU would think a 63-year-old man with lots of money and 59 tournaments to his credit would have had enough of lugging four-stone golf bags around the golfing fairways of the world.

Not Pete Coleman, a genial character from south-west London who is in Shinnecock Hills this week working for Darren Clarke. He captured those 59 tournaments with nine different players and worked for about 20 in all. Patience is the word that trips off his tongue whenever the subject of Shinnecock Hills is mentioned. Inevitably you wonder if he has told his boss not renowned in that area about this all-important ingredient.

"I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that," he said with a laugh before using his experience of more than 30 years on the bags of the game's finest to quickly change the subject!

"We're getting on alright. I'm pretty relaxed about it. Darren's a high maintenance player. Being with Darren is a challenge. That's what Chubby [Chandler, Clarke's manager] said to me when he offered me the job and I said I'd take it on. Darren's a great player, he's got everything you need to win a golf tournament. He's got to stay focused and calm and he can do it."

Pete Coleman will, of course, be forever associated with the great German golfer Bernhard Langer, even though he has won with Seve Ballesteros, Colin Montgomery, Lee Westwood and even Nancy Lopez, among others.

His link with Langer only broke up a couple of years ago when Langer decided to live permanently in Florida. Pete explained: "He gave me a schedule that was basically one week on and one week off and I just didn't fancy flying back and forward every second week."

When asked if working with Langer and Clarke was like chalk and cheese, that big grin broke out again and he cannily answered: "If you want to put it like that. I've been quoted a few times and it's come back on me. I remember once when I worked for Greg Norman, I went out for lunch with an Aussie journalist and he asked me how Greg compared with Seve, for whom I had also worked. I said that while I think Seve is the best player in the world, Greg is the best payer. Well, the headlines in the paper the next day were 'Seve the best player, Greg the best payer'.

Greg asked me to explain and I replied that it was true. He didn't like it but that's part of the job keeping on the right side of everybody's ego."

"It's my second time here at Shinnecock, I was with Bernhard in 1995 and I think we finished about 15th or so", he recalled. "It's a very hard golf course. It's not a very long course and that's why Corey Pavin won that year. It takes a lot of patience and good course management. You don't need to hit long distances. Some of the holes may be long but there are big slopes on the fairways and while you might only knock it 240, it will travel 300 once it hits one of those slopes.

"It is linksy alright, with a lot of very sloping greens and a lot of places where you have to putt from well off the greens. There isn't that much rough around the greens, it's all slopes. The fairways are hard and fast. It's like Pebble Beach in that, although there you have all the rough around the greens. The winner this week has to be very, very patient. There are going to be a lot of mishaps."

Because of the way the course has been set up and the ever present wind there is a strong belief there won't be a better chance to end the 34 year European drought since Tony Jacklin triumphed at Hazeltine in 1970.

"There's a little more chance than if we were at Westchester or somewhere like that. They don't have an equal chance on your average US Open style course. They're not used to all that thick rough around the greens. Here you can putt and indeed must putt from a long way off the greens because it's very hard to chip up those slopes."

Now very much a veteran and still without a US Open title on his CV, Pete Coleman isn't exactly holding his breath that he might break his duck this week. But he doesn't conceal his belief in Darren Clarke the golfer and if he can help to keep his boss calm and focused, then stranger things have happened.