Caddie's Role: I have been convinced over the past month or so that human beings can adapt and get used to anything that is thrown their way if it is flung at them often enough. Yet another 5am alarm call for those of us on the wrong side of the soggy American draw again last Thursday in Atlanta. Yet another deluge and fantastic lightning show right above the ill-fated Sugarloaf golf course and, after much lingering, yet another abandoned golf day.
So when it all happened again the next day, the sight of about 20 caddies rocking themselves to a placid state on the veranda of the Sugarloaf Country Club, resigned to yet another morning of waiting for Mother Nature to give us outdoor workers a break and a chance to earn a crust, the scene was starting to look normal for a 2005 US Tour event.
A scene of complete and utter boredom for everyone concerned. I wonder will we look back in a couple of years' time and forget just how disrupted our usually simple lives had been this year.
Luke Donald, who finished second in Sawgrass the previous week and is obviously in form, cried off after play was called on Thursday. He had a sore shoulder. Quite frankly the caddie shack was expecting my boss and other notable players in Atlanta to develop ailments in order to preserve themselves for the first major of the year down the road in Augusta this week.
The reason some players like playing Sugarloaf is that, if the weather permits, it is usually good preparation for Augusta National. A bit like playing the preceding event to the Open Championship on the European Tour on a classic links course, the benefits for the sponsors can be getting a reasonable field without any other enticement apart from the preparatory advantages the BellSouth Classic offers to those wishing to seriously challenge for a Green Jacket the following week.
The snag with this year's event was after all the rain that fell, the course, when we finally got to play it, offered very little similarity to the Augusta National course and you might as well have played a links course as a warm up for all the good it would do you. Trying to decide where to play in America this year has been virtually a waste of time because the weather has changed all the traditional rules.
We finally teed off in our first round, after our third 5am wake-up call in a row, on Saturday last to near Baltic conditions that reminded more of a windswept, bitterly cold links at home in January.
Most of us looked like we had flippers on as we picked our way up and down the undulating mud bath the course had been reduced to. There were a lot of us with the "why bother?" look on our hanging lower lips, why not get an office job? To add further irritation to an already irritable bunch of golfers, the range had been shut for two days because they couldn't retrieve the balls from the swamp that the range had become. Keeping these thoroughbreds cooped up without their daily gallop can lead to all sorts of complications by the time they eventually get to the starting line.
So off we went on Saturday. Great. Apart from it being like a winter's day.
Freezing cold and an strong north-west icy wind. The first tee was moved forward so the players could reach the fairway. The tour had gone from a vehement reluctance to be seen worldwide lifting, cleaning and placing the ball in a PGA Tour event, to doing so within a club-length of where the ball lay, anywhere apart from on the greens and in the hazards.
In other words the course was unplayable but under the circumstances it was the best they could do. And that's what the tour has been reduced to this year.
The whole routine of a weekly event has been seriously compromised due to unseasonable weather. There could be a few vacancy signs going up in the tournament director's office window if our recent run of bad weather luck continues. It is virtually impossible for the tournament director to make the right decision. Most of the players and caddies can forget that there are other interests to consider in the bigger picture of a tournament.
We ended up playing with two guys who were not really on the best of terms, in fact they were not speaking to each other which meant we were in the middle of a fairly hostile environment.
So it was very cold, extremely wet underfoot which, on a very hilly course meant, that walking was an ordeal. Then the big bright clouds started rolling in and soon we were hauled off the course this time due to sleet and hail.
We congregated on the terrace waiting yet again for further instruction. As we were waiting, we watched the tent on the range where they kept the range balls take off over the boundary and into the players' car park as the north west wind reached near hurricane levels.
Some players were still completing their second round of the BellSouth on the Monday of the Masters. Reduced to 54 holes, we finished the event last night and headed east for Augusta and judging by the forecast the start of yet another weather delayed event.
Lets see just how influential those green-jacketed gentlemen really are? I think we have all been numbed into a zombie state where we expect to spend all day at the course and hit just a few shots if we are lucky.
