On the eve of the British Open at Lytham in 1996, Steve Stricker and his wife Nicki celebrated their third wedding anniversary, working together as player and caddie. Last Tuesday, when the anniversary came around again, Stricker was back at Lytham, but without his wife.

With a three-year-old daughter, Bobbi Maria, to take care of, the caddying Nicki decided against leaving the child with relatives. Either way, she dislikes flying long distances, which explains her absence from Melbourne last January where her husband captured top prize of $1 million in the Accenture Matchplay Championship.

Lytham was Stricker's Open, and since then, he has amassed almost $4.5 million in tournament earnings, including $1.5 so far this season. And most of that money was gained with Nicki as his caddie, making nonsense of locker-room predictions that he would never achieve anything "with her on his bag". As it happens, this is his 16th event so far this season and she has been on the bag for 13 of them. "Those criticisms of her were very unfair," he said. "She happens to be a very good caddie and though we bark at each other from time to time, it's mostly a lot of fun." In fact, it's so much fun that they reversed roles for a recent tournament in their hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, where Nicki played college golf to quite a useful standard.

Competing in the city's Women's Championship, she came from seven strokes behind with a round to force a play-off. Which she lost.

They have been together for most of Stricker's professional career, though Nicki gave up the bag in 1998 when pregnant with their daughter. And she resumed caddying in 1999 at the Greater Milwaukee Open, not a million miles from their home.

Meanwhile, by way of further cementing family ties, her father Dennis Tiziani, the golf coach at the University of Wisconsin, happens to be Stricker's teacher.

The palyer went on to suggest that American greenkeepers had much to learn from courses like Lytham, even with it's burnt hues. "With all the emphasis on green being beautiful, I think we've lost our way in the US, " he said. " I think that what we have out there is beautiful. And on my home course back in Madison, they're coming around to this way of thinking."