Are caddies mere beasts of burden? Robots to serve and please and agree? Or are they more…much more?
IMO, thanks to Stevie’s interview, the age of the caddy has begun. It is interesting, important, revealing, compelling, worthwhile.
Stevie is the first relevant caddy to speak out from the shadows of great players and talk with credibility about his value to the game and to the pro golfer. But he’s only skimmed the surface.
The caddy insights, whether self-important or not, are views of the game and of the tour that we have never seen or heard before. We want more.
Why was the press so interested in Stevie? Simple. He’s an insider, an experienced winner, a former friend of the former number-one golfer on the planet, and a subject never scrutinized in this way before.
Was Stevie wrong in what he said? No. Nothing like what he said, from his source, has ever been said before. He can do no wrong. We want more….truth, exaggeration, rumor, perception, feeling…all of it.
In golf, there’s the play, the winner, the loser, the struggle, the relationships, the psychology, the fun. Now, we have an eye-witness to all of that, a caddy was the third arm and right brain of the most dominant golfer of our era. Don’t we want to hear the trash and truth, the good, bad, and ugly? Of course we do!
Attention caddies: the press is focusing on you. They are hunting for new subjects for interviews, insights, reality shows. Your time in the spotlight has come. And I think it is a great, new storyline in the subtext of professional golf.
(cc: the LPGA)