NY Times writer Bill Pennington caddied for LPGA Tour professional Brittany Lincicome who finished T2 at last week’s Bell Micro Classic. Pennington assisted Lincicome during Wednesday’s Official Pro-Am. See Pennington’s article from the NY Times below:
GLADSTONE, N.J. — Caddying for the L.P.G.A. star Brittany Lincicome on Wednesday, I suddenly felt nervous and jumpy near the 14th green, as if the responsibility of the job had finally hit me.
It wasn’t about choosing the right club to hit or helping read a worrisome birdie putt.
No, I was certain I had lost two of Lincicome’s club head covers. Oh, and when she asked for the golf ball she had just handed me to clean, at that particular moment I could not find that, either.
As you might have surmised, caddying is harder than it looks, especially when it is for a top pro who:
a) hits the ball 285 yards (hard to see that far);
b) hits shots precise yardages and requires accurate preshot distance calculations (so much math);
c) putts perfectly straight but wants a seasoned eye to point the safe path through every green’s hills and swales (who am I, Sacagawea?);
d) expects you not to lose her stuff, most especially her golf ball seconds after marking it and placing it in your palm (caddie jumpsuits have too many pockets).
The idea was for me to caddie for Lincicome in the pro-am tournament of this week’s Sybase Match Play Championship at the Hamilton Farm Golf Club to get a better sense of what caddies actually do, and to have an insider’s view of the imperative partnership between golfer and caddie during those tense moments of competition.
Take, for example, this moment Wednesday that had me rummaging through Lincicome’s golf bag trying to ascertain just what she needed as we contemplated par from the contoured fairway of the devilish 11th hole. I pondered the options, then handed over my best choice.
“No, not that one,” she said. “The one next to it.”
“This?” I said. “But that’s what I gave you on the sixth hole.”
“I like the crunchy nut bars,” Lincicome said.
In all seriousness, although truthfully a pro-am is not all seriousness, being a caddie is a hard, demanding job. First of all, a tour pro’s bag is heavy, laden with balls, clubs, towels, notebooks, tools, rain clothes and, yes, snacks. It is wide and bulky to make room for sponsors’ logos. It might weigh 35 pounds. For the first few holes, that weighs on your shoulder. By the 10th, it weighs on your back because your shoulder is numb.
Making things much worse is that the golfers walk fast — they are young and in shape — and you are usually expected to get to the ball, wherever it is, about when they do. You must do this even though you might have to first chase after a divot, grab it and replace it, then clean the club the player just hit with a wet towel, put the club away and lift the bag to your shoulder, again.
The routine never changes: comment on shot (“Nice ball”), get divot, clean club, chase everyone down the fairway. When you catch up at the ball, you have to pull out the course’s yardage book, which has annotations, markings and drawings that resemble Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a matter of seconds, you find a nearby sprinkler head or edge of a bunker, which, according to the book, is, let’s say, 125 yards from the front of the green. You march off how many yards your player’s ball is from this landmark. Let’s say in this case it is five yards farther from the green.
Then you consult your pin-placement page, which shows where the hole has been placed on all 18 greens. You find the appropriate green and see that the hole is six yards from the front of the green. Then you check the personal caddie notes you would have made two or three days earlier while walking the course with a range finder and see that shots to this particular green will play three yards farther because the green is elevated above the fairway. At this point, you might also factor in wind (no charts for that, just an experienced estimate).
Anyway, at that point, you declare to the player: “It’s 136 yards playing uphill, so the number is 139.”
And don’t forget that number.
I recall doing this Wednesday on one hole for the 24-year-old Lincicome. A few minutes passed as her pro-am partners hit their shots. When it was her turn, she stood over her ball, then hesitated.
“What was the number again, Bill?” she said.
I had completely forgotten — there had been so many numbers already. And did I tell you my shoulder was numb?
Lincicome, who could not be more polite and pleasant, waited as the number was calculated again.