Would YOU Caddy On Tour?
I got to thinking today about the life of a professional caddy on tour. Caddying on tour has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, and it’s not a bad way to make a living if you can loop for a top-125 player. Reportedly, caddies make 5% of the pro’s check if he makes the cut, and 10% if the pro wins a golf tournament, and some (most?) earn some sort of weekly guarantee for showing up. So if your pro makes the cut and earns say, $100,000 for the week, you get $5000.
Let’s look at last week’s PODS Championship for some real numbers. Calcavecchia won the tournament and $954,000 (before taxes), so his looper potentially made $47,700 for the week. On the other hand, if you were looping for Tom Lehman, he only made $17,490, so your cut would have been $874.50. Not exactly soup-line wages, but it’s not 5-star hotel kind of money either.
There’s a great blog here written about a caddy on tour and while he doesn’t update it every day, it does provide for some interesting reading. One of his blogs is title, “So You Want To Be A Caddy”, and he lists a bunch of characteristics of being a caddy. I won’t recreate the complete list, but here’s a few:
- Your biggest fear will no longer be death. It will be “Caddie-Ass”.
- 7-Eleven becomes another food group.
- You can easily remember 4 names after a single introduction, but the four guys you’re working for can’t seem to remember yours.
- You WILL be doing laundry every two days.
- Unless you work hard to keep your brain active, it will systematically shut-down after 3 weeks of watching SportsCenter 5 times every morning.
- You will rediscover the beauty of Motrin IB and weep uncontrollably after your first pain-free loop.
Do you think you could handle the job of a looper for one week, let alone a complete year on tour? Fill out the survey and let me know!
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1 opinion for Would YOU Caddy On Tour?
Geoff Young
Mar 16, 2007 at 5:12 pm
“7-Eleven becomes another food group.” What, there are others? ;-)
And no, I don’t think I could caddy on the tour.
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