Bender back on bag after cancer scare

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Aaron Baddeley’s loss to Tiger Woods in 20 holes in the third round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship last year wasn’t a life-or-death situation for Baddeley’s caddie, Pete Bender. That came later.

Bender hadn’t felt well all week, and one of his lymph nodes had swollen to the size of a golf ball. One doctor insisted he was fine, but a second opinion confirmed his worst fear. As Bender, 59, put it at the FBR Open on Wednesday, he’d “caught” cancer.

“It’s the same thing Hubert Green had,” he said as he stood on the practice putting green, where he received well-wishes and the boss practiced his stroke. “A doctor tried to tell me it was secondhand smoke. I’ve never smoked in my life.”

When Bender dropped out of sight after the Match Play, word got out that one of the Tour’s most famous caddies was in bad shape.

Bender counts two British Open victories (1986, ’90) among 28 Tour wins in his 38-year career. He’s worked for Greg Norman, Ian Baker-Finch, Ray Floyd, Jack Nicklaus, Lanny Wadkins, Hal Sutton, Rocco Mediate and now Baddeley. The caddie didn’t think he’d hit retirement age, but had to reconsider from his hospital bed.

He left the Tour, went home outside Sacramento, Calif., had his tonsils out, underwent chemotherapy and radiation, and didn’t eat for 62 days. Always skinny to begin with, he went from 178 pounds to 130. He spent two months in the hospital.

“Eventually I was so depressed I just had to get out of there,” he said. “I told them to get me out whatever it took.”

Wouldn’t you know it, the caddie strapped his salvation to his back. Doctors fit him with a backpack full of calorie-rich liquid food, a mobile soup kitchen that began to restore some of Bender’s vitality by way of his veins. He wore it for two months.

As he began to gain back weight (he’s now 150), he began to feel better. Baddeley, who played the rest of 2008 and his first two tournaments of ’09 with an old friend and longtime Tour caddie named Anthony (Ant Man) Knight, called Bender regularly, although the caddie couldn’t always talk.

In his first week back on Tour at TPC Scottsdale this week, Bender will tote a special lightweight carry bag, courtesy of his boss and Adams Golf. He walked the course without the bag Sunday and “felt great,” and went nine holes with the bag Wednesday.

“He’s skinnier,” Baddeley said, “but he’s still pretty chatty.”

Bender goes in for regular check-ups and is guarded in assessing his health, which he has continued to address with a combination of traditional and holistic treatments. He’s done with the chemo, but it’s not yet done with him.

“I can taste avocadoes and bananas but not salad dressings and certain soups,” he said. “I live on vitamins. I’m taking like 45 a day. I knew I needed help, and found a woman who has really been great. That’s how I’ve put on the 20 pounds.”

Baddeley finished up his putting and Bender followed him to the tiny carry bag, leaning on its kickstand in the fringe. Bender hoisted the clubs over his shoulders for the short walk to the range, a man trying to make the most of a mulligan.

(Photo: Stan Badz/PGA TOUR/Getty Images)

Singh's caddie a vanishing breed

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. – There’s something eye-catching about Jeev Milkha Singh’s caddie, and it’s not the brand-new, rainbow-colored Nike running shoes.

Janet Squire, 38, is one of only two female caddies at the 90th PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, and is believed to be just one of two fulltime female loopers on all the major professional tours. Fanny Suneson, who gained fame as Nick Faldo’s caddie, and now works for Henrik Stenson, is the other.

“There were a few around, about six or seven of us 10 or 12 years ago,” Squire said as Singh signed for a 74 Friday to go into the weekend at 2 over par, three off the lead of J.B. Holmes. “Jarmo’s girlfriend used to caddie, Patrick Sjoland’s girlfriend, Stephen Ames’s wife caddied.”

Neither a wife nor a girlfriend (although she “might” have a boyfriend somewhere, she says), Squire, a 15-year caddie on the European Tour, got the call from Singh in April.

“She’s been on the tour for years, and I’ve seen her around,” Singh said. “She wanted to come to the U.S. Masters, she’d never been. I said, ‘Jan, let’s go.’ I finished 25th, so it was good. We’ve had two wins in five weeks. I think Janet’s been great, she keeps me calm out there, she’s very positive. It’s been a good relationship so far.”

A resident of Sunningdale, England, Squire began learning the trade at 13 “with the boys” at her town’s famous club. “They’ve shown me the way,” she said, and so have some world-class golfers. Before Singh, Squire spent eight years working for Jamie Spence, two for Matthias Gronberg and two for Mark Roe.

All of which makes her not so different from every other caddie in the professional game. Singh has had female house caddies while playing in Asia, but Squire is his first fulltime professional female caddie. He says it’s no big deal, except for one thing.

“Sometimes when you get angry, and there’s a woman on the bag, you want to watch your language then,” he said, laughing.

(Photo: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

The Players entrance

I arrived Wednesday morning at the Players and had barely taken 10 steps off the media shuttle when a matter of blogoriffic proportions (yes, I just invented that word--use it if you dare) was thrust in front of me. A tour caddie, who must remain nameless because of possible retaliation, ripped into the working conditions the PGA Tour (which has historically displayed mostly a total disregard for caddies) has supplied here at the TPC.

The caddie's complaints were many. They've been bumped into a small, garage-sized room, and there are exactly two bathrooms--for more than 150 caddies. The food is apparently abysmal, too. Yesterday, the caddie said, there was a bin of what was supposed to be hash browns but in fact more closely resembled mush. The caddies have also been bumped out of their old parking lot, wedged between the entrance road and the first fairway, and into another lot across the road that isn't as close.

"The tour has always had nothing but contempt for us caddies," he told me. "But two bathrooms for 150 guys? That's ridiculous."

To add insult to injury, they are laboring in the shadow of a kajillion-dollar clubhouse that was brand new last year but includes no caddie hangout. And, they are fresh off the Wachovia Championship, where caddies get valet parking, first-class food and their own large tented villa and lounge. "And the tour wonders why guys like playing Wachovia?" the caddie asked. "Anytime the tour is in charge of an event, we always get screwed."

Welcome to Ponte Vedra Beach, fellas.