‘Three to four years is the usual time span for the player-caddie relationship. After that, you tend to get sick of each other. You sense when the end is near’
MOST Februaries, JP Fitzgerald takes off the week of the AT&T pro-am at Pebble Beach, leaving his regular bag to link up with financier Dermot Desmond. They have met with mixed success over the years while always enjoying the experience, and after their endeavours this year Fitzgerald was asked if there was anything in Dermot’s game that reminded him of his current employer, Rory McIlroy. Sensing a trap, Fitzgerald, replied: “They’re both very nice people.”
It’s a little cameo that depicts Fitzgerald’s personality. He was noted for his worldliness from the time he first appeared on the golfing scene back in the early 1990s and it’s a virtue he has been only too happy to call upon when the going got tough, as it will inevitably do in his precarious profession. A Dubliner who was associated with Co Louth Golf Club during his playing days because the family kept a mobile home at Baltray, JP combines a serious disposition with a happy outlook on life, characteristics that make him an outstanding companion.
“JP has a sense of humour which is something I enjoy about him”, said Ernie Els, for whom he worked for three years. “At times, you need someone out there to keep things light hearted and not too serious.”
Fitzgerald reached two Irish Close finals in his amateur days, losing to Eddie Power at Tramore in 1987 and Gary Murphy at Portstewart a couple of years later. In those days, he struck up a close friendship with Paul McGinley and it was the Ryder Cup vice captain who gave him his first caddying job. The highlight came in the 2002 Ryder Cup with the 10 foot putt McGinley sank on the 18th green at The Belfry to clinch the European victory.
“I reminded Paul that we had this same putt two years previously during the Benson & Hedges International and that it didn’t break as much as we had thought”, says JP. “He had hit it left lip and it stayed there. I told him this one was only barely on the left lip. He obviously hit this one a whole lot better. I was praying for it to drop. It was such an incredible relief as well as an unbelievable joy. It would have been so gut-wrenching to have lost that match. The half (against Jim Furyk) had done it for Europe and I was so happy for Paul.”
He subsequently carried for Englishman Greg Owen, Darren Clarke (whom he frequently and mischieviously reminded of their 1987 semi-final clash in the Close which Fitzgerald won) and, of course, Els before landing Rory McIlroy’s bag. They have enjoyed some great moments over the past couple of years, most notably at Quail Hollow where Rory’s closing 64 gave him a four stroke victory, his first on the PGA US Tour.
Nevertheless, sections of the British media haven’t spared JP when things haven’t gone quite so well, causing McIlroy’s manager, Chubby Chandler, to mount a forceful defence earlier this year.
“JP is the perfect ‘minder’ for Rory as he is a very protective individual”, Chandler maintained. “He gets a bit of stick, but an awful lot goes on around Rory McIlroy that a normal caddie wouldn’t meet. If you take the bits that he does very well, it may make up for the fact that JP is not the best caddie in the world. But he is certainly one of the better caddies in the world, and for Rory he is definitely the best caddie in the world.”
THERE are few player-caddie relationships to match that of Padraig Harrington and Ronan Flood.
“I just couldn’t imagine myself working for anyone else”, insists the one-time 2 handicapper from the Stackstown and Hermitage clubs who left a safe but unfulfilling job in AIB to live the nomadic life of a professional caddie. The decision wasn’t all that radical given that he was already a close friend of Harrington, loved the game and was courting (Padraig’s wife) Caroline’s sister. Ronan and Suzie later married and are expecting their first arrival in December.
The sceptics didn’t see the partnership working out, but they could hardly have been wider of the mark. Three major championship wins later, two out of three successful jaunts to the Ryder Cup, and tournament wins all over the globe give the lie to those gloomy predictions, and even if Harrington’s season has fallen short of what he would have hoped for, the alliance remains as solid as ever.
Even the prophets of doom have been impressed at how Padraig and Ronan have combined so well for more than six years. Moreover, those members of the caddying fraternity who initially took a poor view of an “outsider” trespassing on their territory quickly realised Flood was as sound as they come. In fact, he hadn’t been in their midst all that long when they voted him their caddie of the year for 2007. While Flood was quietly pleased at the development, his employer was over the moon.
“It is very nice to be voted by your peers as caddie of the year”, Harrington enthused. “Ronan has many strengths. He knows what to do, whether we are 10 under or 10 over. He keeps saying the same things. On the way to winning the European Tour order of merit at Valderrama a few years ago I was going through a shaky spell and getting a bit down on myself. He gave me the Harry Potter line … ‘don’t go getting down on yourself or I’ll iron your hands’”.
I suppose you would need a strange sense of humour to do this job, but Ronan Flood is rarely seen without a ready smile. It’s as if he’s really enjoying himself out there, like he’s thinking, “jeez, I could be stuck in a bank back in Dublin instead of out here in this beautiful place walking the fairways with one of golf’s greatest players and doing very nicely, too, in every way.” He himself settles for: “It’s the best walk in golf.”
NOW that caddies everywhere wear shorts, it may have been forgotten that not so long ago they were forbidden on the European Tour. Dissatisfaction at the diktat had rumbled on for years until the issue came to a head at the Qatar Masters in Doha in 2000. Temperatures soared into the 90s and lugging four stone bags around the desert was driving the caddies to distraction. Colin Byrne was between bosses at the time and spending the week with Englishman Roger Chapman, but when push came to shove he was not found wanting.
“It’s time for a change”, he stressed, and duly paraded around the golf course in a pair of shorts. He was immediately threatened with a fine by the Tour. However, the caddies leader Martin Rowley and his colleagues stood by the Irishman and the restriction was lifted, something for which Colin Byrne will forever enjoy the appreciation of the caddie fraternity worldwide.
J.P. Fitzgerald and Ronan Flood will be alongside Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington this week and have already been part of successful Ryder Cup teams, but surprisingly this will be a first match for Byrne, whose experience and knowledge played a major role in the “wild card” selection of his boss, Edoardo Molinari.
It’s not that Colin hasn’t been regarded as one of the best and brightest loopers for many years, more a case of spending much of his time with players like New Zealander Greg Turner and South African Retief Goosen, with whom he won a memorable US Open at Shinnecock Hills in 2005. The New York crowd that week were behind Phil Mickelson to a man and woman and in their enthusiasm all too frequently went over the top.
“They were very hostile and shouted things like ‘go and three putt and make it exciting’, or ‘it’s yours to lose’, anything that might put Goosen off and open the door for their favourite, Phil Mickelson”, recalls Byrne. “We heard this and more, but were able to turn it to our advantage. Retief fed off it and I took my mood from him.
“A caddie can get caught up in the emotion and start making mistakes. I wasn’t especially nervous because, I suppose, I was so focused. That also came from Retief. It might have been different with any other player, but he just exudes confidence. The more they shouted, the quieter and more resolute he became.”
How Goosen and Byrne combined to thwart the jingoistic crowds, Mickelson and Ernie Els is part of golfing folklore. Not surprisingly, Colin regards it as one of the major highlights of his career and was followed a fortnight later by a smashing, almost runaway win in the Smurfit European Open at The K Club, and later the same year the South African shot 64 on the final day of the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta to round off a wonderful campaign.
It all served to propel Colin Byrne into the domain of the ‘super-caddie’, populated for so long by people like Peter Coleman and Dave Musgrove and nowadays by Steve Williams (Tiger Woods), Rikki Roberts (Ernie Els) and one or two others.
Byrne’s regular newspaper columns in the Irish Times have led to two books, Bagman and Bagman 2. An indication of the esteem in which he was held by Retief Goosen was provided when the South African turned up at Royal Dublin for the launch and wrote the foreword for the book, describing how his caddie had contributed to the Shinnecock triumph.
“He may have written that he was like a duck in water – all calm above the surface but frantically flapping beneath – I saw and experienced only the calm”, said Retief. “Precisely what I required from my caddy on that day and indeed any other day.”
He has worked for others, including Philip Walton, David Feherty, Scott Simpson, Roger Chapman, Anders Forsbrand, Greg Turner, then reigning Open champion Paul Lawrie, Goosen, Swede Alexander Noren, before being head-hunted by Molinari shortly after the Italian’s victory in the Scottish Open in July.
“I was as surprised as anybody by that and I asked him why he wanted to change at that stage of his career”, says Colin. “He replied that he wanted more experience on the bag.”
And when the move paid off in spades with his magnificent victory in the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles that clinched his Ryder Cup debut, Molinari paid a glowing tribute to Byrne, going so far as to admit that “I’m still not sure whether I have proved myself to him.”
Says Byrne: “Caddying is a pretty good alternative to work. It’s not brain surgery. I don’t get tired, physically or mentally. You don’t lock yourself up in your room every night, but you look after yourself. I run a fair bit because carrying a bag around a golf course won’t get you fit, it’s all stop and start. I suppose it can be a lonely life, but we’re all loners and mavericks to some extent and I am happy by myself.
“We’re only as good as the guy hitting the shot. You never know when you’re going to find yourself in the car park again. You never get complacent. Three to four years is the usual time span for the player-caddy relationship. After that, you tend to get sick of each other. You sense when the end is near. I’ve been sacked. It’s the nature of the business – and it works both ways. Caddies also walk away from players.”
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