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In the Green

Once just a service position on the golf course, caddying has evolved into a coveted and lucrative career, especially on the PGA Tour. As the FBR Open approaches, professional caddies past and present talk about the competition, challenges and how the game of caddying has changed from tee to green.

John Dickerson

Only Tiger Woods knows exactly how much his caddie makes every year. If he were paid the usual five to 10 percent of earnings, he’d make about $1 million this year, in addition to salary. Not bad for carrying a bag of golf clubs. But it may not be so easy. Aspiring and retired PGA caddies say caddying for the world’s best golfers is a demanding and often unstable career.

The course from country club caddie to PGA right-hand man presents numerous hazards. Successful PGA caddies share a few common strategies: a grueling work ethic, an expert knowledge of the game of golf and the ability to keep their mouth shout at just the right time.

“Once you start volunteering information, you don’t have a job for long,” says Alfred “Rabbit” Dyer. The oldest retired living PGA caddie, Dyer would know. He carried hall of famer Gary Player’s bag for 20 years. On occasion he also caddied for Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan, among others.

Golfer and Caddie, Horse and Jockey

After stepping off a Greyhound at the Phoenix bus station in 1962, Dyer was the first Black caddie to work at Arizona’s Thunderbird Golf Club, where he caddied until 1968. Four years later, Gary Player asked Dyer to join him on the PGA tour. During his

first tour in South Africa, six-foot-four Dyer made headlines when he knocked out a taller White golfer who tried to punch him. The first African-American to caddie at the British Open, Dyer also landed a punch on an English caddie who called him “darkie.”

“Gary always stood beside me,” Dyer, 66, says in a recent interview with The Times. Dyer says racial discrimination is a thing of the past in professional golf. After 50 years at the bag, Dyer has seen caddying change as much or more than any other facet of professional golf.

Phil Mickelson is especially known for his close relationship with caddie and Scottsdale resident Jim “Bones” Mackay. Mickelson’s publicist said Bones would rather not comment for this story, but confirmed that the two have a close working relationship on and off the green, having spent 14 years together.

“A caddie’s got to know his golfer, when to speak and when not to,” Dyer says. “Once I saw Gary Player grab a three-iron, and I knew that was way too much club, but he’s the captain on the ship. The less you say, the better,” Dyer adds. “If he asks, then you come in and say, ‘Well, Gary, I think it’s a five or a six.’ That’s a good caddie.”

With lasers, yardage maps and other modern measuring methods, some PGA players refuse to depend on caddies. But like Mickelson, most PGA leaders foster warm relationships with their caddies, relying heavily on the second set of eyes.

“A lot of the top players have that kind of relationship,” says Dennis Cone, president and founder of the Professional Caddie Association (PCA). “When you’re in the thick of it, you’d better have a good relationship with your caddy. That’s the only person out there with you.”

Tiger Woods apparently maintains such a relationship with caddie Steve Williams. In a Golf Digest interview, Williams spoke of giving Woods the wrong iron advice. “I said seven-iron; he was thinking eight-iron,” Williams said. “He hit seven-iron over the green. Should have hit eight-iron. He bogeyed the hole. I told him after the round that I gave him the wrong club. It’s his decision in the end, but he’s great when I screw up. It’s not that I’m not trying. He knows that,” Williams said.

Becoming a PGA Caddie

So just how does one become a PGA caddie? According to Dyer, the process has changed incredibly since 1955, when he started as a nine-year-old “ball boy” at a New Orleans country club. In those days, the PGA’s “Southern Swing” consisted of five to ten courses scattered throughout the Southeast.

“After school we’d go to the country club. We’d make 25 cents, and that was big money. We were poor kids from across the tracks.” Dyer will never forget the day golf legend Ben Hogan paid him $15 for carrying his bag.

“That was the most money I’d ever seen. Now PGA caddies make $2,000 a week, plus five to 10 percent of winnings,” Dyer says. He remembers splitting hotel rooms with four or five other caddies, and if one caddie didn’t get paid that week, the others would let him sleep for free.

PGA caddie pay still varies as much as golfers’ earnings, but some suggest the top caddies make well over $250,000 a season. The traditional ten percent of $15 million in earnings would be $1.5 million. PCA president Dennis Cone says caddying has changed as the money has gotten bigger. “Some players have their caddie on a salary now,” Cone says.

Forty years ago, PGA golfers drove luxury cars from tournament to tournament, while caddies followed in Greyhound buses. It was a hand-to-mouth existence.

“Now I can’t believe the cars some of these caddies are driving,” Dyer says. In recent years he has buried numerous PGA caddies of the old guard who aged without retirement, health insurance or even Social Security.

Now Cone knows at least four PGA caddies who used to be PGA players themselves, a step down that was unheard of 20 or 30 years ago. More often PGA caddies are golfers who didn’t make it in qualifying school.

Paradise Valley Country Club caddie Mike O’Hara would be happy to be one such caddie. “I’d like to make it to Q School, but if I don’t, I’d love to caddie. I definitely have aspirations of being a PGA tour caddie,” O’Hara says.

Even professional country club caddies find it challenging to transition to the PGA. “Now there’s more caddies than golfers,” Dyer says. “You make a mistake, you lose your job. You tell another caddie you had an argument with a pro, next thing you know they’re asking your pro for your job.”

Dyer says caddying has not always been so aggressive. “We used to look out for each other, even carry each other’s bags. Now those guys, a lot of them don’t even speak to each other,” Dyer says. “Caddies were very united. Now the money’s big, and people don’t care about each other,” he adds.

Retired caddies offer a few tips for aspiring PGA caddies. They suggest becoming a local caddie at a PGA tour course. “A lot of pros take a local caddie. If you’re a caddie at that club, you go to the golf tournament, and you sign up. Nine out of 10 times you’d get a job if you caddie at that golf course,” Dyer says.

In Dyer’s case, he caddied for numerous PGA pros at the local New Orleans country club across the tracks from his parent’s house. When he ran into Gary Player 10 years later, Player remembered how well Dyer had caddied.

“’Rabbit?’ Gary said, ‘I remember you. How would you like to join me on the tour,’ he asked me,” Dyer remembers.

Years later, Player would lend Dyer money for his son’s college education. “He’d lent me $20,000 for my son’s college, then we’d win, and I’d pay him back,” Dyer says. “Later he left me money to send my son to Princeton University.”