Caddie's Role/Colin Byrne:I am frequently asked if I get to play the courses that I "guide" my player around so precisely during tournament weeks. This rarely, if ever, happens for a number of reasons.

There is no time as caddying is a seven day job often with big trips in between events. None of us travel with golf clubs, and getting on the tournament courses is usually impossible around the time of the event.

Finally and more appropriately, playing a course as an amateur having seen how it should be played by those with their names on their golf bags is a bit disheartening.

Last time, in Portugal, I think was the first time in all my years of looping I actually played a tournament course the day after the circus had left town. Despite it being a thoroughly enjoyable day it cemented my professional position on the other side of the golf bag.

For most single-figure handicap golfers it is very hard to compete with professionals playing off the back tees. The most obvious difference between amateurs and pros is the distance between a reasonable amateur's drive and the average professional's tee shot. I know having played with my boss, Retief Goosen, in the past he is at least 70 yards longer than me off the tee.

When I carry out my preparation for a golf event I see the course vicariously through a professional's eyes. The 280-yard carries on dog-legged holes and the 330 run-outs catch my immediate attention. Of course this is irrelevant information when I am swinging the club.

Some friends had come to Vilamoura for a combined golfing and spectating trip and they kindly asked me to join them for a small competition around the Oceanico Victoria course where Stephen Webster had just won the Portuguese Masters at 26 under par.

We sat over dinner in Vilamoura a couple of Sundays ago and discussed the challenge of playing the tournament course off the back tees to the Sunday pins with the exact same set-up the pros faced over the previous four days.

The evening bravado began over dinner, the challenge diminished as quick as the Portuguese wine flowed, and the betting book grew thicker with bets such as who would break 30 points, who would amass six pars and who could make the 245-yard carry to the right fairway on the 14th hole.

Slog, wood wearing out, battling to reach many fairways is what most of us anticipated. The course is played for 51 weeks of the year by holiday golfers. The fairways had been greatly reduced and the rough savagely thickened for the professionals.

As a caddie I am used to watching my guy swoosh his club through thick rough with relative ease, sending the ball in the direction of the green. Some of the lies I got in the rough I actually considered declaring the ball unplayable and taking a penalty drop.

There is a real art in chopping out of thick rough which the pros do by creating a steep angle of attack into the ball.

The rough had looked innocuous to me as I watched Retief recover from it. As I gritted my teeth and clenched my forearms in an attempt to dislodge yet another errant tee shot I quickly realised how thick the rough really was and how easily good players extract themselves from the hay.

It was another beautiful day on the Algarve and a light southerly breeze blew across the course like it had done during the tournament. The greens had been heavily watered and not cut so they were considerably slower than the previous day.

I hit a good drive by my modest standards down the first and ended up bashing a three wood to the front trap short of the green. My player had been stuck between hitting a seven and eight iron all week.

As I had suspected the biggest challenge of the day was going to be to reach most of the fairways.

Of course the harder you swing the more likely you are to hit off line. I had considered taking an unplayable to the left of the second fairway and eventually spluttered the ball 10 yards in front of me to a more manageable lie. By the fourth hole the trend was well set. It was a shorter par four, with the wind slightly against. Retief had considered hitting three wood to leave himself a full sand wedge into the tricky green. I tried battering a driver in order to leave myself a six-iron into the green. I didn't quite catch it which left me a five-iron instead.

The length differential I was aware of but in practice it is an almighty slog which becomes more of a mental battle than a physical one. With tight Sunday pins the old basics of not short-siding yourself become important to the point of it being virtually impossible to get up and down if you missed the pin on the tight side.

We had a great day pretending to be pros. Webster was 26 under. The average score for our merry band of amateurs was 26 points, a fair indication of the difference between talent and enthusiasm.