CADDIE'S ROLE:It's been an amazing couple of weeks as I prepare to carry for the dazzling Colombian in the British Open
I JUMPED about 100 spots up the world rankings last week after the French Open. I calculated my rise by picking up Camilo Villegas’ white Cobra bag last Tuesday morning. You see us caddies can leapfrog the rankings vicariously through players of a higher status.
Villegas had contacted me earlier in the year, or should I say he had tried to call me but by the time I managed to get back to him he had already arranged another porter for a four-week stint in America. He had parted company with his previous full-time caddie earlier in the year and had decided to try out a few available bagmen before deciding on a more permanent arrangement.
I was sort of in looping limbo myself having worked for Alexander Noren since January this year. He was unfortunate enough to end up with two injuries which have stunted a spiraling career. Just as he finished second in the Indonesian Open last February his steady progress ground to a halt with a wrist injury.
As he eased back in May after two months in convalescence he suffered a knee problem that put him back on the bench again. When this happened, he suggested that I should maybe look out for another bag for a while given the uncertainty of his physical situation.
Caddying is a very strange profession which does not entail simply doing your job, serving your time and slowly rising up the ladder. The consensus tends to be that it is only a matter of time before the next top bag becomes available. This is not necessarily so. I have met some caddies who have won majors with players in the not too distant past who are now club caddying for amateurs in country clubs in Florida.
Of course it is nice to think top and aspiring players are always on the lookout for an available and experienced bagman - who knows for sure how the system works. There is a feeling in the caddie-shack that the penchant of players for extended family members to pick up their bags and do the right familial thing has made bag changes a little less predictable.
Anyway for some unknown reason Villegas decided I would be worth a few weeks on his bag, presenting me with a fascinating two weeks with the dazzling Columbian in the Scottish and British Opens.
Having worked for just the one player in Retief Goosen for almost five years, it is a refreshing challenge to be given the opportunity to assist different players. Even though the process of advising players is a standard procedure you are after all dealing with humans and of course everyone is different. So from 6.15am last Tuesday I have been observing just what it is that distinguishes a top-15 world-ranked player.
I suppose a 6.15am meeting is a telling sign of the hours that these top players put into their weekly tournament preparation. I am not suggesting that lesser players are not prepared to roll out of bed as early in order to fit in as much as possible into a limited period, but there is a sense of the early bird catching the worm with Villegas.
I was instantly impressed by the order of the golf bag when I started trying to figure which pocket held what – it seemed like everything was very much where it should be in each designated pouch. The rain gear was folded in a meticulous manner, the towel draped evenly over the clubs and everything was just so. He reminded me his ball marker, an Australian 50 cent coin, had been in the bag since he turned professional. I guarded that with more care than I did the clubs.
His enthusiasm when I agreed to do these couple of weeks gave me the impression of a player with a purpose as he journeyed to Scotland to ultimately challenge for the British Open.
When we got on the Loch Lomond course I could see he absorbed every detail about each hole like a sponge. His observations off the tee were to hit the club that would land in the widest part of the fairway. Although there are generous fairways at Loch Lomond, he did hit a huge percentage of the fairways over the four days.
His next mission was to plot his path around the greens, giving a lot of attention to where he wanted to be for certain pins. While he played his practice round he didn’t necessarily hit a lot of shots but soaked up the nuances of each hole. On a couple of up-turned saucer greens he pleasantly surprised me by suggesting that even with a wedge in his hand he didn’t need to shoot at the pins – the middle of the green would do just fine. In this aggressive age of the young golfer with modern equipment, that statement was a revelation as to how the man from Medellin has got to where he is today in world golf.
Villegas carries his own yardage book and I noticed on the second day we played he had stamped his own compass points beside the already detailed compass points printed in the sophisticated yardage book.
Villegas had lines representing not just north and south, he had north east and south east and so on. He was particular about the elevations between shots. He added numbers to his yardage to include how cold it was, how up- or downhill the shot was, how much wind was involved. So it wasn’t as simple as 150 yards and 10 to the pin. It was plus two for the hill, three for the temperature and four for the wind.
All this was going on as I grappled for the first time in six years with caddying for a player who works in yards and not metres. He had a little chart with the distances that he hit each club. Naturally they were not estimates; they were pin-pointedly precise. There is an attention to detail that of course I have witnessed at times before but not with the consistency the fastidious Columbian has. It is what he needs to perform, it has served him well in elevating him to 12th in the world rankings. It is important as a caddie to recognise just what makes a player tick.
Golf is a game of inches and frequently those inches win, so if Villegas has every blade of Turnberry grass charted to the precision that his detailed surveying of the course would suggest, it may be a case of another jump up the rankings for this porter.
