Counting down 5 infamous moments in caddie history
Pity the poor caddie. We only hear about him (or her) when he mucks up, as Mike "Fluff" Cowan (below) did Saturday at the Barclays. Neither Fluff nor his boss Jim Furyk counted the number of clubs in the bag. Furyk was penalized two strokes on each of the first two holes for playing with 15 clubs.
With that in mind, behold my highly unscientific Top Five Rule-Breaking Caddie Moments:
5. In 2005 at Firestone, Stuart Appleby took a free drop from a cart path, but his caddie Joe Damiano scooped up the ball before it had traveled two club lengths, costing his boss two shots and at least $100,000. Appleby stiffed Damiano that week.
4. An umbrella-wielding European Tour looper once sheltered his man during a downpour -- while he was putting. The penalty: two strokes, and a nickname that followed the caddie everywhere: "Mary Poppins."
3. OK, while not a rule-breaker, this story underscores the job insecurity that comes with being a professional bag-man. It's said that the volatile Mac O'Grady once struck a shot, then fired his caddie before the ball returned to earth. Tough crowd.
2. Back to our list. David Feherty tells the tale of two veteran U.K. caddies who between them had "no money, a half set of teeth, and livers made of concrete." They were on a train bound for an event when they realized they only had one ticket between them, with the conductor working his way down the aisle. One of them saw a well-dressed woman enter the bathroom. He followed, knocked, and said, "Tickets please, madam!" She slid hers under the door, and the two caddies presented two passes to the conductor, both living to loop another day.
1. In the greatest 15-club fiasco of them all, at the 2001 British Open, Myles Byrnes failed to remove an extra driver from Ian Woosnam's bag before the final round. Woosnam birdied No. 1 to grab a share of the lead, but on the second tee Byrnes, realizing his mistake, sheepishly told his boss, umm, well, it's like this: "You're going to go ballistic..." He did. The 2-stroke penalty may have cost the Welshman his second major. (Byrnes was fired the next month after he overslept and missed a tee time at the Scandinavian Masters.) As the video of a steamed Woosie shows, a picture is worth a thousand f-words:
Photo: Robert Beck/SI
