Speaker 1: It's the Son of a Butcher podcast. We come to
Speaker 1: you every Wednesday. I'm your host, Claude Harmon.
Speaker 2: This week's guest.
Speaker 1: We've had him on back in twenty twenty one. My
Speaker 1: uncle Bill Harmon, one of the best teachers on the planet,
Speaker 1: my dad's fourth brother, so the youngest of the Harmon brothers.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I wanted to get him on
Speaker 1: is at age seventy three, he went back on the
Speaker 1: bag for Bill Hass last week in the MX caddying
Speaker 1: on the PGA tour. Caddied for Jay Haas for so
Speaker 1: long and as much as being a player and was
Speaker 1: part of Billy's DNA, as much as being an instructor.
Speaker 1: As part of his DNA, what is the biggest part
Speaker 1: of his DNA is.
Speaker 2: Being a caddie.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was fascinating to talk to him
Speaker 1: about that experience with Bill last week and to kind
Speaker 1: of get his views. He's an old school guy, speaks
Speaker 1: from the hearts from the hip and it's a good one.
Speaker 1: But before we get to Billy, our friends at Cobra
Speaker 1: Golf have a new driver out. It's the Dark Speed
Speaker 1: three models this year tailored for different types of players.
Speaker 1: The LS model that's low launched, low spin, So that's
Speaker 1: going to be the one that if you're trying to
Speaker 1: get that spin down, if you're hitting down on that
Speaker 1: golf ball it's spinning too much, the LS will be
Speaker 1: the one for you. They've got an eight degree LS
Speaker 1: model eight degree launch are Loft, which they kind of
Speaker 1: think of as their kind of race car. It's their
Speaker 1: fastest one. So if you're looking for speed, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for distance, that eight degree in the LS take
Speaker 1: a look. Then you've got the X, which is kind
Speaker 1: of combo of both worlds. It's got low spin, it's
Speaker 1: got super fast ball speed with a lot of stability.
Speaker 1: It's got a new forward weight which is going to
Speaker 1: help people kind of maximize where that spin is and
Speaker 1: maximize the spin they're getting off the driver. And then
Speaker 1: you've got the MAX which is the most forgiving of
Speaker 1: the three highest MOI, and that's going to be the
Speaker 1: one that if listen, if you're not hitting it in
Speaker 1: the center of the face all the time, that's going
Speaker 1: to be the one that you're going to want to get.
Speaker 1: Cobra Golf their drivers. I like them, I really do.
Speaker 1: I like the way they look I like the way
Speaker 1: they feel, and I like the way they perform. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for a new driver in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: give the Cobra Dark Speed a good look. And now
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get to a really, really fun
Speaker 1: and informative interview with my uncle Bill Harmon. My guess
Speaker 1: is my uncle Bill Harmon Philly. We had you on
Speaker 1: the pod in the first year in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's so many stories going on in
Speaker 1: professional golf right now, and it seems to be all
Speaker 1: about money and fighting, and I think your.
Speaker 3: Story about you know you going back at how old
Speaker 3: are you?
Speaker 2: What do you?
Speaker 4: What do you?
Speaker 2: How old?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Seventy three, seventy three?
Speaker 1: You caddied last week on the PJ Tour for Bill
Speaker 1: Hoss at seventy three years old. It's me it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean there's nobody out there caddy and that's your age.
Speaker 1: I mean there's some old guys out there, but there's
Speaker 1: nobody caddy in that at your age of.
Speaker 4: I think Hiller Coffy has me, uh Fluff might be
Speaker 4: might little older than I think I am, but there
Speaker 4: weren't too many I didn't see anyway.
Speaker 3: How did it come about.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously the history, we've talked about it before,
Speaker 1: but when did you start caddying for Jay Hoff?
Speaker 4: You know, I started with Jay in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: I've worked for.
Speaker 4: My brother Craig at Oakhill in the seventy seventh season,
Speaker 4: and I got just totally soured on the country club business.
Speaker 4: My dad told me that I had a thirty mile
Speaker 4: proer brain and a hundred mile prour mouth, and I
Speaker 4: seem to prove that at every job I went to.
Speaker 4: So I actually left Craig early. I couldn't finished the
Speaker 4: season because I was just disenchanted with the Gulf Inness
Speaker 4: and I went up to the Russian River area of
Speaker 4: northern California to find myself, and unfortunately I did and
Speaker 4: I ran out of money. And there was a guy
Speaker 4: who played at wake Forest but J named Lex Alexander,
Speaker 4: who was working for my dad at the time at Wingfoot,
Speaker 4: and Lex called me up and said Jay just won
Speaker 4: the San Diego Open. Looking for a caddy he's exempt.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever heard this whole story,
Speaker 4: but so I came down to the desert and I
Speaker 4: met him, and he told me to meet him at
Speaker 4: Orlando in two weeks at Rio Pinar's where they played
Speaker 4: the tournament in Orlando. And I got off the plane
Speaker 4: with my luggage and I had forty dollars to my name,
Speaker 4: and it was a twenty dollars cab fair. And I
Speaker 4: got to the course on a Monday, and I saw
Speaker 4: somebody that I knew, and they asked me what I
Speaker 4: was doing there, and I said I'm Caddy and they
Speaker 4: said for who Jay Haas, And they said, well, we
Speaker 4: just found out that he failed to commit. So now
Speaker 4: I got twenty dollars to my name, I got no job,
Speaker 4: got my shoecase with me. At this time, I'm overtaking
Speaker 4: your father as the biggest jerk in the family. It
Speaker 4: was I going into this thing, which in the.
Speaker 3: Old days, you know, I mean, obviously we.
Speaker 1: All complished that even with him, and obviously we all
Speaker 1: know who my dad is now and who he's become.
Speaker 1: But if you think about the four brothers, you know,
Speaker 1: my dad, Craig, Dick who sadly passed away and left
Speaker 1: us too early, and yourself, you and my dad were
Speaker 1: the black sheep, and Craig and Dicky were the straight arrows.
Speaker 2: And you wouldn't think.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: you see who my dad, who Butch Harmon has become now,
Speaker 1: they don't realize what a what a He was a
Speaker 1: lost soul and.
Speaker 3: A rebel, sure, you know, and you know didn't have
Speaker 3: it easy and stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's no surprise that in the seventies that you
Speaker 1: and Buchie were well fighting for low Man on the
Speaker 1: Totem hole.
Speaker 4: They had a Monday qualifying, so I was looking to
Speaker 4: see if I just knew anybody because I had to
Speaker 4: get one hundred dollars from somebody. I mean, I couldn't live,
Speaker 4: I have no job, I don't have a place to stay.
Speaker 4: I got a suitcase. So Terry Deal was from Rochester
Speaker 4: every Deals, Yep. I'd played junior golf with them. I
Speaker 4: knew Terry. I've played many tours with him. So I
Speaker 4: went out on the course and lo and behold, Lynn
Speaker 4: Strickler was caddying form. I'm not really ashamed of this story,
Speaker 4: but the truth is that I did have a good
Speaker 4: bag of weed from northern California with me, and Lynn
Speaker 4: was four caddy in on this hole, and I thought
Speaker 4: I'd introduce myself by asking him if he wanted to
Speaker 4: smoke a joint. So this is how this caddying things start.
Speaker 4: So I finally talked to Terry, tell him I'm shooting bad.
Speaker 4: Lynn thinks on the greatest guy in the world, and
Speaker 4: I still love him to this day. And Terry says,
Speaker 4: you know, I just got a new car in Rochester,
Speaker 4: New York. I'll fly you up there. I'll give you
Speaker 4: a couple of credit cards and you can drive it
Speaker 4: down to Durrel. So now I have a week of living,
Speaker 4: which when you have twenty in your pocket is a
Speaker 4: heck of I feel like a millionaire. So I fly
Speaker 4: up to Rochester and I tell Craig my story. Of course, this,
Speaker 4: you know, goes through the family. Another Billy story, not
Speaker 4: a Butch story, this time of Billy story. And when
Speaker 4: I left Rochester in August, I thought I had fifty
Speaker 4: dollars in the bank. Well, when you only got twenty fifties,
Speaker 4: looking pretty good. So I went to the bank I
Speaker 4: had five hundred. Man, I'm liking this tour, you know.
Speaker 4: So in the meantime Craig had called Dad to say
Speaker 4: he can't believe what Billy did. He showed up in
Speaker 4: orlandover twenty dollars and the whole thing. And now he's
Speaker 4: up here going to drive Terry Dial's car. My dad
Speaker 4: says to Craig, will give him one thousand dollars. I
Speaker 4: don't want him walking around with nothing, and I'll write you, okay,
Speaker 4: which my dad is a very genderous man. So now
Speaker 4: I got fifteen hundred. I'm liking this tour well, fifteen
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty, I guess technically, so don't forget the twenty.
Speaker 4: So now I pick up Terry's car and I'm driving
Speaker 4: down to Miami. I've got plenty of time to get there,
Speaker 4: and I swear to God, about an hour outside of Manhattan,
Speaker 4: I started getting the sweats because I'm saying, okay, they'll
Speaker 4: just drive straight over that bridge. Do not take a left,
Speaker 4: Do not take a left. Do not take a left,
Speaker 4: because I have many childhood friends who lived in the
Speaker 4: city and do not take a left. Do not take
Speaker 4: a left, do not take a left foot I go left,
Speaker 4: took a left, So I stay there three days. I
Speaker 4: remember I spent six hundred, so that wasn't too bad.
Speaker 4: So I still had nine hundred and twenty. But now
Speaker 4: I have to drive straight through. I'm tired, I'm beat up,
Speaker 4: and I'm so disgusted with myself. Why did I make
Speaker 4: this decision? And just see my whole life. I couldn't
Speaker 4: make the right decision. I'm not going to drive straight too,
Speaker 4: and I'm tired. I got no shot really to do this.
Speaker 4: And I drive across the George Washington Bridge and I'm
Speaker 4: just joked and self loathing and hatred. I see these
Speaker 4: two college kids. A little cardboard sign says Fort Lauderdale.
Speaker 4: I pull over and I said, you're my guys. I said,
Speaker 4: there's only one stipulation. I'm paying for everything, but I
Speaker 4: ain't driving. You two were driving, and we're driving straight through,
Speaker 4: and I'll be rolling the joints in the backseat, and
Speaker 4: we're going straight through to Fort Lauderdale. And that's how
Speaker 4: my caddy life started. In the very first tournament ch
Speaker 4: we were paired with Nicholas and so that was my
Speaker 4: basically my first week on tour, other than, of course,
Speaker 4: you know, catching clubs like Javelin's coming at me, heading
Speaker 4: for your dad in the sixty nine Canadian Open. But
Speaker 4: that's how it started.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when you look at what the
Speaker 1: PGA tour has become today with all this talk about
Speaker 1: live and the money and all of this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour is still just it is an amazing organization.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing product.
Speaker 1: You know when you look at caddying in the seventies
Speaker 1: versus going now in twenty twenty three. So PGA Tour
Speaker 1: event where there's courtesy cars and free laundry and there's
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: Bones and everything.
Speaker 1: Bones mackay has made so much money caddy and he
Speaker 1: could probably fly private.
Speaker 2: Oh I thank you, probably could. The caddying has become.
Speaker 4: But I think, h when we were when I started,
Speaker 4: I think the first three tournaments at j one that
Speaker 4: I caddied for in first place was forty thousand. But
Speaker 4: forty thousand was a lot back then, and so if
Speaker 4: first bridge is forty, that's what first prize is. And
Speaker 4: so and I look back on those days. None of
Speaker 4: us had any money. The caddies, we took great care
Speaker 4: of each other. If someone needed a hundred to get
Speaker 4: out of town, you gave it to them. Many weeks
Speaker 4: we slept three or four in the room, and there
Speaker 4: was a camaraderie there that happens when people are poor.
Speaker 4: I mean that, and you bond together in different ways
Speaker 4: when you're there for each other. Plus we didn't know
Speaker 4: any different and so we would pack four in a
Speaker 4: car that couldn't fit for and we drive through the
Speaker 4: night to some tournament. And I mean, the money today
Speaker 4: is great. It's a much greater life. And I wouldn't
Speaker 4: trade anything for those first three or four years because
Speaker 4: all of those people that I traveled with today are
Speaker 4: still lifelong friends. And I think we're lifelong friends because
Speaker 4: we didn't have all the advantages that they have today.
Speaker 4: And I think the advantages today are fantastic. I wish
Speaker 4: I was still caddying, but I'm kind of like Bob
Speaker 4: Goldby told me one time, the first three tournaments Bob
Speaker 4: won in the sixties, his total winnings was seventy five hundred,
Speaker 4: and he said, you know what, that was more money
Speaker 4: than I ever had. And I was a truck driver's son,
Speaker 4: and I was winning tour events and I was playing
Speaker 4: golf for money. And he never begrudged the players the
Speaker 4: money they made one bit. I don't begrudge the caddies
Speaker 4: what they make one bit, or the players. I do
Speaker 4: think they're spoiled, though to be honest with you, I do.
Speaker 4: So it was kind of funny last week I was there.
Speaker 4: I didn't know hardly any caddies, maybe four, so a
Speaker 4: lot of them are kind of looking at me like,
Speaker 4: who's this boso, you know, And I'm thinking to myself, PayPal,
Speaker 4: this is my seventh decade, so he just better back
Speaker 4: it up a little bit, you know. But those were
Speaker 4: great days, and I think back on it. The caddyan
Speaker 4: on the PGA Tour your greatest job I've ever had
Speaker 4: in golf. Like I said, to this day, I still
Speaker 4: have the friends that I had then. I love them,
Speaker 4: and I think part of it is Jackie Burke said
Speaker 4: one time that humor usually comes from four people because
Speaker 4: they use laughter to get through the day. And I
Speaker 4: think we use laughter a lot because nobody really had
Speaker 4: any money. I mean, I guess if you won ten percent,
Speaker 4: you want four thousand. Caddy today can't Marcus Ball with
Speaker 4: four thousand dollars. That'd be a bad week for him,
Speaker 4: you know, a great week. I had a blast. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't try.
Speaker 3: How was it? How was it?
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I mean I've I've I was lucky
Speaker 1: enough to caddy on who were twice in my life.
Speaker 3: Once for my father in the Quad City Open.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn't make the cup.
Speaker 3: And what what was it? It was the old Peak
Speaker 3: die course across.
Speaker 4: The Yeah, yeah, it was a monkey course. I caddied
Speaker 4: for him there too, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then I counted once for Steve Elkington the week
Speaker 1: before he won the first Players Championship back when which
Speaker 1: you worked in New.
Speaker 4: Orleans, Man, And.
Speaker 1: This is the true story. We got paired with Scott
Speaker 1: Hoke and Chip Beck, right, and on the first hole, Scott.
Speaker 4: Holm, one of them is the eye, had tole and
Speaker 4: the other one's mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: On the first hole, Scott Hoak's got like a forty
Speaker 1: footer and it doesn't go in and he's just livid.
Speaker 1: On the first hole on Thursday in the morning. And
Speaker 1: on Friday Chip Beck lipped out a three footer to
Speaker 1: miss the cut and he said to his caddie.
Speaker 2: Smiling, you remember smiling. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So on the other day he said to Smiley, you
Speaker 1: just gotta love having a chance to make the cut
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 4: That's it, yeah, And that's it is forced.
Speaker 1: But that's the spectrum, right, And how was it? I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: Billy at your age in your early seventies carrying, I
Speaker 1: mean carrying the golf bag.
Speaker 3: I mean those bags are not Did he give you
Speaker 3: the full staff back.
Speaker 2: Or did you know he didn't. I'm in good shape.
Speaker 4: I work out twice a week with a trainer. I'm
Speaker 4: I've lost about twenty pounds it it wouldn't have been
Speaker 4: a problem for me. My shoulder might have hurt, but
Speaker 4: my legs and everything now, I'm I'm blessed to have
Speaker 4: good health, you know, as you know, I beat throw
Speaker 4: cancer and alcoholism and addiction, and so I'm my last
Speaker 4: two mulligans I hit down the middle of the fairway.
Speaker 4: So I'm in good shape.
Speaker 3: So did you go big bag?
Speaker 4: I just look like I'm not.
Speaker 3: Did you go big staff bag or did you go
Speaker 3: carry back?
Speaker 4: He brought a carry bag, a little pless carry bag,
Speaker 4: you know, with the stand and everything. So there was
Speaker 4: a part of me that really wanted the big bag,
Speaker 4: because you know, I wanted to prove that I could
Speaker 4: do it. But it didn't. It didn't bother me that
Speaker 4: I had the little one.
Speaker 1: Your relationship with Jay Hoss has been you know, he's
Speaker 1: one of your best friends. It's been a lifelong friendship.
Speaker 1: I know, you love him like a brother. And you know,
Speaker 1: Bill Hoss is named after you, and your first born
Speaker 1: son is named after j Jahas.
Speaker 4: So I would say, in some respects Thh that the
Speaker 4: public doesn't know that I call you c h because
Speaker 4: you notice, but I've called you that my whole life.
Speaker 4: It just comes out naturally. I was actually in the house,
Speaker 4: the Hoss home, when Bill Hass was born, and I
Speaker 4: was somewhat responsible because.
Speaker 2: I went back to.
Speaker 4: The room that I was staying in and it was
Speaker 4: across from Jay and Jan's room, and Jan was very
Speaker 4: pregnant and she was making these like unbelievable noises and sounds.
Speaker 4: I just never heard noises like this painful stuff. And
Speaker 4: so I went out to Jan and I said, boy,
Speaker 4: I think Jan is struggling. He said, Ah, they're just
Speaker 4: labor pains. No big deal, said he ain't no labor pains.
Speaker 4: Sound he was born thirty men mites later. Wow, he
Speaker 4: was about to come out right then. So in some
Speaker 4: ways it's hard for me to caddy for Bill or
Speaker 4: j because I'm too close to him. They mean too
Speaker 4: much to me, So it's hard for me not to
Speaker 4: get emotionally involved with him. I'm good at it because
Speaker 4: I've done it all those years, three hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: tournaments with his dad, and I'm good to turn him
Speaker 4: that on and off. But you know, if they have
Speaker 4: a bad day, you know, your emotions are that of
Speaker 4: someone like your son. You know, you just feel bad,
Speaker 4: and you know you can't do anything about it. If
Speaker 4: you're caddying for a guy that you really don't care for,
Speaker 4: and it's just a business. He really doesn't bother that
Speaker 4: much for the guy when you're leaving the course, you know.
Speaker 4: And so it's always hard for me to caddy for
Speaker 4: for either Bill or j because I am too close
Speaker 4: to him, you know, and I'm rooting so much as
Speaker 4: a friend for him. I never think of what it
Speaker 4: means to me. And I told this story the other
Speaker 4: day on the Golf Channel, but what no one really knows.
Speaker 4: I don't think I ever told you this story. But
Speaker 4: when my first son, Zach was born in Rhode Island,
Speaker 4: you know, I was still drinking and drugging, and I
Speaker 4: remember this day looking in the back seat of him
Speaker 4: though even though Robin and I had the seat turned
Speaker 4: the wrong way, and I saw this little thing that
Speaker 4: was a day or two old and I never felt
Speaker 4: more in love in my life as something. And I
Speaker 4: remember looking out the window and excre's my language. But
Speaker 4: I never felt like a bigger piece of shit. You
Speaker 4: know that this kid's dad was an alcoholic and a
Speaker 4: drug addict, and that's where the I think that's where
Speaker 4: my bottom started. I'd love to say I quit that day,
Speaker 4: but it was about ten weeks later when an intervention
Speaker 4: was done. But about two weeks before the intervention, Zach
Speaker 4: broke up in the middle of the night like he
Speaker 4: always did, around two in the morning, and Robin would
Speaker 4: go feed him. And I had been drinking that night before,
Speaker 4: and it bothered me that he woke me up. How
Speaker 4: about that. That's a good guy, that's a good dad.
Speaker 4: I remember as soon as Robin woke up, I felt
Speaker 4: like the most worthless piece of shit on the planet.
Speaker 4: I'd self loathing that if she wasn't there, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: have been able to take care of That's the bottom line.
Speaker 4: He would have been an inconvenience to me. That's what
Speaker 4: alcohol and drugs do to people. And we lived right
Speaker 4: above the eighteenth Green in the clubhouse at Newport Country
Speaker 4: Cover where there's balcony, and she went back to sleep,
Speaker 4: and I went out in that balcony and I contemplated
Speaker 4: doing a swan dive. I didn't have the guts to
Speaker 4: do it, but I felt like I didn't want to
Speaker 4: be around anymore. Now we'll fast forward to June of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, which is coming up. The Senior Open
Speaker 4: is at Newport Country Club. You can't make this story up,
Speaker 4: no way, Patty for Jay in the eighteenth Green sits
Speaker 4: right below the balcony that nineteen ninety two I was
Speaker 4: going to commit suicide on. And if anybody's struggling with
Speaker 4: alcohol and drugs and thinks that your life can't turn around,
Speaker 4: I'm going to look up at that balcony and I'm
Speaker 4: going to think, Man, what a lucky guy I am,
Speaker 4: because there was a day.
Speaker 2: So I don't think.
Speaker 4: I'm not a religious guy would say I's spiritual. I
Speaker 4: don't think a human being could write that story because
Speaker 4: they wouldn't. Hollywood wouldn't accept it as too corny.
Speaker 3: They could write it, nobody would believe it.
Speaker 4: That's a factual statement. So the same guy that showed
Speaker 4: up at twenty dollars in Orlando wanted to jump off
Speaker 4: this building, you know, in the year twenty twenty four,
Speaker 4: we will end our county relationship right below that balcony.
Speaker 4: You can't make that up. So I'm a really lucky dude.
Speaker 1: To say the least, it must be amazing for you
Speaker 1: to caddie for a player like Bill who. I don't
Speaker 1: think Bill gets enough credit for being as good a
Speaker 1: player as he was.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we.
Speaker 1: All think given the talent Billy had, Bill had as
Speaker 1: a player, you know, to have only six wins, I
Speaker 1: mean he won the first FedEx, but I mean he
Speaker 1: was such a like a natural talent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're cautying for someone that you watched.
Speaker 1: Be born.
Speaker 3: In your seventies.
Speaker 1: And now you're on the tour and yeah you're in
Speaker 1: and and and again. You couldn't write the script write
Speaker 1: Palm Springs. You're caddying for Bill Hoss and Palm Springs
Speaker 1: where you grew up, I mean you you grew up home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an amazing story. Is caddying different today, Billy than
Speaker 1: it was when you started? You know?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 4: You know, the game is show different. The players are
Speaker 4: so different, and nowadays, you know, if you look at
Speaker 4: the way the game has grown, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 4: going to just say the last thirty years with the
Speaker 4: aja GA, you know, the junior tours, they play more tournaments,
Speaker 4: and pros play, and they have college recruiters out there,
Speaker 4: so everybody's doing something for someone when they're teenagers, so
Speaker 4: they get used to this, and then they get recruited
Speaker 4: and they go to college and everyone's doing something for them,
Speaker 4: and it seems like and you've been out there a
Speaker 4: lot more than I, but a lot of these good
Speaker 4: college players will bring one of their college teammates out
Speaker 4: caddy form. And if you're playing in a major college
Speaker 4: as a college player, even if you don't get your card,
Speaker 4: you're still a good player. So you know the game
Speaker 4: and you know the player. And so I think the
Speaker 4: caddying part of it has changed dramatically in that sense
Speaker 4: that good young players are bringing good young players out
Speaker 4: to caddy form and then once they at the drift
Speaker 4: of all the ins and outs. But you have so
Speaker 4: much information today, which is good, and so I think
Speaker 4: the obviously, I think the quality of caddy and has
Speaker 4: probably improved, just as the teaching is improved and stuff
Speaker 4: because of information. But you were lucky and your dad
Speaker 4: and I were lucky. You see, we learned to teach
Speaker 4: before we had this information. So you and I and
Speaker 4: your dad have the benefit of using our eyes before
Speaker 4: we had all this stuff, which makes you doubly good.
Speaker 4: And so I think the caddies today it's a more
Speaker 4: of a profession to us, to be honest with It
Speaker 4: was a big party, it really was. And there wasn't
Speaker 4: that much money. We were, you know, every town was.
Speaker 4: We were in the circus.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I think it was more fun then, but for the
Speaker 4: living they make now, and uh, you can see it,
Speaker 4: you can see it. We played with Chess and Hadley
Speaker 4: and Is caddy Barry bw they called them. He's great caddy,
Speaker 4: very professional, really good. I watched to him, I watched
Speaker 4: him interact. I like watching that interaction. As you know,
Speaker 4: all the years you've been out there, Brooks has had
Speaker 4: a great caddy for a long time.
Speaker 2: Ricky Elliott one of the best, you know.
Speaker 4: And I think what people don't realize about caddying is
Speaker 4: there's a rhythm to it, and every player has a
Speaker 4: different rhythm. And every when I caddied for Curtis Strange,
Speaker 4: he would uh no, stone would be unturned on a
Speaker 4: selection between an eight and a nine iron. You know
Speaker 4: it'd be a discussion like Warren Peace or something. But
Speaker 4: if the next week I caddied for Lanny, I you know,
Speaker 4: I'd get the ordage. I'd say, all right, we got
Speaker 4: one seventy to the front. That's one eighty six to
Speaker 4: cover the left bunker. It's what do you like? Wait
Speaker 4: a minute, I haven't even gave me the final you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean tell you where the pin is?
Speaker 2: Well do you like?
Speaker 4: And so you have to get into a rhythm. And
Speaker 4: if you don't caddy for a guy like with Bill.
Speaker 4: You know, I caddied format the President's Cup in Australia
Speaker 4: when he won the fed Ex Cups. I don't know
Speaker 4: what's that fifteen years ago or whatever it was. I
Speaker 4: don't even know how long ago. So you're always a
Speaker 4: little bit uncomfortable because you don't know when to step
Speaker 4: in and say something. So when I caddy for Jay,
Speaker 4: I knew when to say something. I knew when to
Speaker 4: shut up. I caddy enough for Curtis to always shut
Speaker 4: up Lannie. I tell the story that we were in
Speaker 4: South Africa. I think it was maybe the first sun
Speaker 4: City event that they advertised a million dollars winner take all.
Speaker 4: I think everybody got a hundred. We played in the
Speaker 4: Skin Game in Durban, I believe the weekend before with Payne, Stewart,
Speaker 4: Curtis and Bernhard Langer, and Lanny won about two hund
Speaker 4: and fifty thousand there. So I was already up, and
Speaker 4: he's he's tied for the lead after two rounds with Longer. Now,
Speaker 4: Lanny's the fastest fire in the world, and Longer is
Speaker 4: the slowest fire, you know. And it's you've been down there.
Speaker 4: It's one hundred and ninety degree it is. It takes
Speaker 4: his skin off your ears. And the second hole was
Speaker 4: a par five and Langer drove it in the junk.
Speaker 4: It's one of my great stories of all time. And
Speaker 4: Lanny hit a beautiful drive and that long narrow green
Speaker 4: with these necks in it, and the pin was way
Speaker 4: in the back right, two eighty six to the flag,
Speaker 4: but it's elevated a mile, so it's you know, two whatever,
Speaker 4: two fifty or something. And he said, really like Billy
Speaker 4: Bow and I saw I at three wood left. We'll
Speaker 4: have a nice angle to pitch to it, you know. No,
Speaker 4: he says, I can peel a driver off that bunker
Speaker 4: and you get it close. He says, you know, it's
Speaker 4: such a lanny comment, but he means it though it's
Speaker 4: not bs for him. So I'm like, what does guy
Speaker 4: just say he's going to hit a driver for a
Speaker 4: million dollars? You know, he's going to get a deck.
Speaker 4: And he hit the best shot I've ever seen in
Speaker 4: my life. Maybe he started exactly where he said he
Speaker 4: was going to hit it. It started cutting. The green's
Speaker 4: like sixty yards deep. It lands about ten yards into
Speaker 4: the green, and it starts rolling at the hole like
Speaker 4: a putt, and it's getting closer and closer. Next thing
Speaker 4: you know, the people go nuts. He lips it out
Speaker 4: two feet by the linger has chipped out. He hits
Speaker 4: like afore iron on the green about forty feet and
Speaker 4: he makes it for Bertie. So Landy gets in there
Speaker 4: with this kind of interesting setup. You know, he's probably
Speaker 4: gonna get upset. I'm gonna tell the story. But the
Speaker 4: day before we were on the putt and green, he
Speaker 4: asked me to hold their umbrella over him. It was
Speaker 4: so hot, and I'm holding this umbrella in South Africa saying, boy,
Speaker 4: I've really come a long ways in my life. And
Speaker 4: he said, how's my setup, Billy boy? And if you
Speaker 4: ever remembered, every one of his angles was different, I said,
Speaker 4: what ho you button?
Speaker 1: What ho?
Speaker 2: You man?
Speaker 4: He started doing all this on page Yeah, I'm in
Speaker 4: a lot of tournaments that, I said. I know, I know,
Speaker 4: it's just joking, you know. So he gets in there
Speaker 4: and he misses it, no way, and he reaches over
Speaker 4: the backhanded.
Speaker 3: He misses that.
Speaker 2: He makes five. Langer makes three.
Speaker 4: You've been over that course, haven't you? No TV though, anyway,
Speaker 4: the third hole is very tight, and he would hit
Speaker 4: a four wood and if it's one of those holes,
Speaker 4: if you drove it out of play, you make triple.
Speaker 4: So of course his driver head cover was made out
Speaker 4: of mink. You know what I'm talking about. I put
Speaker 4: the pin in and the first thing I see is
Speaker 4: the mink head cover on by the bag. He's not
Speaker 4: going the layup, you know. So now I don't really
Speaker 4: caddy for him. You know, I've caddy for him a
Speaker 4: few times. But am I in a position to give
Speaker 4: him a speech?
Speaker 2: You know? Right?
Speaker 4: So I said, I'm thinking, as I'm walking to the tee,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe he's just hot. Now I can hand
Speaker 4: him this wee wood or do something. Well. He's standing
Speaker 4: on the other side of the tee, which means I
Speaker 4: don't want to talk to anyone so much for this
Speaker 4: this story. So he had these slacks made, you know,
Speaker 4: tailored slacks, I think from a company in Cincinnati called Hamilton.
Speaker 4: We've got this kind of memory. And he had a
Speaker 4: pocket where he kept a ball. He had a ball
Speaker 4: pocket and a coin. The ball fit in there perfectly.
Speaker 4: Tell me this is this is such a Lanny Watkins story.
Speaker 4: So I love Lannie, by the way, He's great. And
Speaker 4: so I'm watching them over there. He's not looking at me,
Speaker 4: you know, he's not looking at me, like, please talk
Speaker 4: me out of this bad decision.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: So Langer, after taking twenty seven minutes to hit his layoup,
Speaker 4: Lannie walks on the tee and he pops the ball
Speaker 4: out of this pocket like a pimple, and the ball
Speaker 4: starts rolling towards the tea mark. It's rolling and he's
Speaker 4: walking after it. And where it stops is where he
Speaker 4: hits it from with the driver off the deck, off
Speaker 4: the deck, doesn't tee it up nothing, and hits the
Speaker 4: exact same shot he hit on the second hole. The
Speaker 4: brittish shot you ever saw.
Speaker 3: On your light.
Speaker 4: So now I'm thinking, you know, we got thirty four
Speaker 4: holes shot back. You know, I'm going to be Bob
Speaker 4: Rotello before Bob Rotello, you know. So I come up
Speaker 4: with this brilliant speech. I said, I come on, Landing,
Speaker 4: you know we're really playing good. You know all the
Speaker 4: bs that you'd say rolling one back got thirty four holes.
Speaker 4: Just got to be patient. He looks at me, said Bill,
Speaker 4: I'm going to clean it up. But he says, hey,
Speaker 4: it's the podcast.
Speaker 3: You can say that.
Speaker 4: The billy boy patience is for fucking losers. Don't ever
Speaker 4: tell me to be patient. I want it fucking right now.
Speaker 4: So I said, Okay, in the last ten minutes, I've gone,
Speaker 4: oh for everything, everything that I'm thinking and as good
Speaker 4: is wrong. Everything that I've said to him is basically,
Speaker 4: get as far away from as as you can here, chuck.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 4: That was my best Landy's story, And I loved him.
Speaker 4: He was great to work for, uh me, he was
Speaker 4: great to work for it really, and his bottom was
Speaker 4: truly real, really truly real, and he could hit the
Speaker 4: shot that he was talking about. He could always back
Speaker 4: it up, and he been a good putter. I'd say
Speaker 4: he was an average putter for a great place. And
Speaker 4: I think it's hard to be a great player without
Speaker 4: being a really good putter anyway, wouldn't you say that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't think.
Speaker 4: You know, there may be bej but on the whole,
Speaker 4: if you're an average DJ would be able to get
Speaker 4: it that good, you know. So I thought if he,
Speaker 4: if he ever was a good putter man, he would
Speaker 4: have won double the tournaments he wanted to think because
Speaker 4: he was actuate.
Speaker 1: So you talk about the rhythm and about you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't caddy for someone all the time understanding them.
Speaker 1: So the obvious question, seats is what do you think
Speaker 1: makes a great caddy?
Speaker 4: Questions? A very easy answer, A great good player.
Speaker 3: I knew you were going to say that.
Speaker 4: Well, I say this and some of my true caddy
Speaker 4: friends don't like it because every now and then I'll
Speaker 4: put it on Facebook, er shop. This is how I feel. Well,
Speaker 4: you've been out there, so you can dispute it. You
Speaker 4: know more about this stuff than I do.
Speaker 3: Hey, Hey, I learned from I learned from my dad.
Speaker 2: But but you told me early on find good players, right.
Speaker 4: Okay, bad player, good caddy, bad player, Okay, good player,
Speaker 4: bad caddy. Good player, good caddy, good player, slightly better player,
Speaker 4: That's what I would say. But if you and play,
Speaker 4: don't make a difference how good you can put.
Speaker 1: So I look at I look at the relationship that
Speaker 1: I've been lucky enough to watch up close, you know,
Speaker 1: both from Brooks and Ricky Elliott, but also from DJ
Speaker 1: and his brother one right, AJ, Right, I mean absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think they I think both of those two, Ricky
Speaker 1: and and and Austin.
Speaker 3: I think they're both world class caddies. I think they
Speaker 3: do a great job.
Speaker 2: I think they have a great understanding of the player. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the AJ has a great understanding of his brother.
Speaker 3: I think Brooks and Ricky Elliott at this point might
Speaker 3: as well be brothers.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're as close as you can get.
Speaker 3: Let me, let me speak.
Speaker 4: I only I've never met Ricky. I've met Brooks. He
Speaker 4: couldn't pick me up, pick me out of a lineup.
Speaker 4: So I don't really know either one of them at all.
Speaker 4: Five Majors. But okay, so I figured out one time
Speaker 4: that caddies asked at least a thousand questions of tournament,
Speaker 4: and you can't say I'll get back to you in
Speaker 4: five minutes on that. So you have to have an
Speaker 4: answer right like this all the time. So think of
Speaker 4: the back nines on Sundays that Ricky has caddied for
Speaker 4: Brooks and the great decisions as he's had to make
Speaker 4: that Brooks has trusted him with and he has to
Speaker 4: make them like that. And so you know, if you're
Speaker 4: playing the seventeenth told Augusta on Sunday and the pins
Speaker 4: in the back right and you're tied for the lead, sure,
Speaker 4: let's go for it. Let's get it back there. But
Speaker 4: if you go six inches too farts on the eighteenth
Speaker 4: t and you make six with a good shot, by
Speaker 4: the way, So as a caddy, what do you do there?
Speaker 4: I think you have to protect going long and hope
Speaker 4: the pre eighteen getting a playoff. But that decision has
Speaker 4: to be made just like that. Their intense scrutiny, an
Speaker 4: intense pressure. So at that point he's reading Brooks, he's
Speaker 4: reading the yards. Maybe they have a perfect yardage, and
Speaker 4: that happens a lot when players win, and you know that, yeah,
Speaker 4: you get the looks, you bet and last week and
Speaker 4: Bob Hope, I call it the MX bill and I
Speaker 4: had in between the yardages fifty times I say, you know,
Speaker 4: to the wrong pin placement, So you know, Claude, a
Speaker 4: lot of the players the ball doesn't curve as much now,
Speaker 4: but they don't really like hitting easy shots into left pins,
Speaker 4: not for the most part, because they'll.
Speaker 3: Be in the hanging out for the right.
Speaker 2: That's a really interesting statement. They don't.
Speaker 4: They don't, and they might not like hitting hard shots
Speaker 4: into right pin placements. So these are looks and these
Speaker 4: Ricky has to know all of these tendencies with Brooks,
Speaker 4: and then he has to know him on the back
Speaker 4: nine on Sunday because that might be different. And so
Speaker 4: what Ricky's done with Brooks is brilliant. What Stevie did
Speaker 4: with Tiger brilliant, okay, And so you have to know
Speaker 4: so much about it, and you have this much time
Speaker 4: to process this information.
Speaker 3: And you're expected if they're asking you, if the player
Speaker 3: is asking you, he's expecting you to be right.
Speaker 4: I don't think any of the golfing public has any
Speaker 4: idea how hard it is to caddy in the sense
Speaker 4: that you could ask you could answer nine and ninety
Speaker 4: nine of those questions correct and then give the wrong
Speaker 4: club on eighteen. There's no other profession in the world
Speaker 4: that you get a ninety nine point nine and maybe
Speaker 4: get fired, maybe get fired, so that the caddies are
Speaker 4: under intense pressure. That's why I loved watching Barry and
Speaker 4: Chess and Hadley work because I know what it means.
Speaker 4: But I will tell you when I started caddying, there
Speaker 4: were a bunch of old caddies out there. Hall and
Speaker 4: laid the lynch in these guys, they almost hated each other.
Speaker 4: They because they didn't have all the information you had
Speaker 4: to get your notes yourself. And I remember sitting in
Speaker 4: a bar, I think we're in Orlando, and a guy
Speaker 4: named Roy, older caddy. Roy was caddying for Andy Bean.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to mention the caddy that I was
Speaker 4: sitting with because I don't like to knock them off
Speaker 4: their pedestal a little bit because he was a great
Speaker 4: caddy and he caddy for major winters and stuff. But
Speaker 4: Andy Bean hit this ball over the green. Now I'm
Speaker 4: just sitting there watching it on TV. This guy went
Speaker 4: nuts with happiness that Roy gave him the wrong club,
Speaker 4: and I realized that they were actually competing like the
Speaker 4: old players were competing. So they didn't really love each
Speaker 4: other back then. I said to David Graham one time,
Speaker 4: I said, why do you think you guys were so tough?
Speaker 4: He said, we weren't tough.
Speaker 2: We were broke.
Speaker 4: So those caddies were always broke. So they were actually
Speaker 4: happy if Big Griff pulled the wrong club because that
Speaker 4: many couldn't caddy. See I've got no guts, she couldn't caddy. Well,
Speaker 4: it's not easy to pull the right Colory time.
Speaker 1: We're talking, we've talked about the you know how caddying
Speaker 1: is different today versus now.
Speaker 3: I mean you've seen I don't think there's probably.
Speaker 1: In the last forty years of guessing up close, there
Speaker 1: isn't a great player.
Speaker 2: That you haven't seen in the heat of the battle.
Speaker 2: Not many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, OK, And I'm talking because you've caddied in President's Cups,
Speaker 1: within the Tiger generation, caddy when Tiger was playing. So
Speaker 1: what is a common denominator, Billy, of all of the
Speaker 1: great players that you've been lucky enough to see, all
Speaker 1: the great champions are is there something that they all have?
Speaker 4: I would say a great portion of them had the
Speaker 4: ability to take the information in that their caddy was
Speaker 4: given them and then stand on their own two feet
Speaker 4: and make that decision. I've spoken to Fluff, Stevie and Joelicabo.
Speaker 4: All three of them told me that Tiger was very
Speaker 4: easy to caddy for never blamed them one time for
Speaker 4: bad club. So Tiger created an environment where it was
Speaker 4: okay to fail, so you can't. I always thought players
Speaker 4: that intimidated the caddy was they were hurting themselves because
Speaker 4: now the caddy is always going to make a conservative call,
Speaker 4: so he didn't get his asked to that. Joe and
Speaker 4: Stevie and Fluff all told me that, you know, and
Speaker 4: Jay has is that way. You know, they want to
Speaker 4: stand on their own two feet. Now, there are some
Speaker 4: that liked to be coddled, as you know, but I
Speaker 4: always felt they're really great ones. Trow Frank Beard told
Speaker 4: me something. And you're out there, you're out there and
Speaker 4: you see these great young players. He told me one time.
Speaker 4: This is before you had all the information, that he
Speaker 4: never met a great player that didn't trust his intuition.
Speaker 4: That's Delani trusted his intuition when he said, no, if
Speaker 4: I peel a driver off that bunker, I can get
Speaker 4: it close. See what I actually told him was the
Speaker 4: smart play, but he could feel he could smell this shot.
Speaker 4: You get visualize it, you could smell it, you know,
Speaker 4: And he just he looked at me like, come, Matine,
Speaker 4: I got this close and he did it. You know.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, golf is a solo sport.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm a big rickey fowler fan. I don't
Speaker 4: like this wee stuff in interviews.
Speaker 2: I just don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know why. I just I'll tell you what
Speaker 4: my you know what Peve is. I'll tell you what
Speaker 4: my pet Peeve is. And I saw it this week
Speaker 4: and it drives me nuts. It's these putting stations that
Speaker 4: they all put up, how much of a grinder they
Speaker 4: take up, which kind of means I'm not allowed to
Speaker 4: putt it that hole even though I'm trying to warm
Speaker 4: up before the round. That's your hole. Now. Can you
Speaker 4: imagine what would have happened in the olden days, guys
Speaker 4: who would have been sculling chip shots into these players' heads,
Speaker 4: they would have been cutting to these holes on purpose
Speaker 4: and making a scene and getting right up in their
Speaker 4: grill and say, listen, Pali, you don't own this goddamn
Speaker 4: hole for all of us. But I think it's very selfish,
Speaker 4: I really do. I think it's very poor etiquette. It's
Speaker 4: not a practice around. It's fifteen minutes before the tournament,
Speaker 4: and you're looking for a hold of plot too, and
Speaker 4: you can't find it. And they got these elaborate things,
Speaker 4: and they got the levelers, and then you get the
Speaker 4: caddy and the player doing aim point from two and
Speaker 4: a half feet and they're backing up by you know,
Speaker 4: they're doing the Macarene or something. You know. I mean,
Speaker 4: it drove me up a wall, I'll tell you that
Speaker 4: right now. Boy, And I wish there was an old
Speaker 4: timer out there that were just start chipping balls into
Speaker 4: these people. Just bore one right into the guy's stomach. Oh,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was your hole. I
Speaker 4: didn't see your name on that hole, you know. So
Speaker 4: I think it's really poor etiquette. It's selfish and self centered.
Speaker 4: That's my rant for the day.
Speaker 3: We'll go to something. We'll go to something positive.
Speaker 1: Billy, what's the best shot you've ever seen in competition
Speaker 1: from a player you weren't caddying?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Boy, that.
Speaker 4: Probably two and it was because nobody else could do it.
Speaker 4: And you've seen that, you've seen it with Jay Tiger. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the first one was at Augusta. In the second hold,
Speaker 4: Jay was paired with the Sevy. What year, oh boy
Speaker 4: was in the I want to say early eighties, okay,
Speaker 4: And he drove it kind of down left center, but
Speaker 4: he drove it on the down sofa one of those moguls,
Speaker 4: and the pin was over it in the back blocked,
Speaker 4: so he got nothing. Hitting a three iron, you know,
Speaker 4: if you can put it in the middle of greenish,
Speaker 4: great shot, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Because back then they don't.
Speaker 1: I mean when in the eighties you were, you would
Speaker 1: go into some of those holes with longer cloths.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, he's hitting a three iron now, and so
Speaker 4: i'm i'm you know, I'm imagining what he's trying to do.
Speaker 4: I think he's going to try to hit something low
Speaker 4: and maybe run it up in between the bunkers and
Speaker 4: either bunker's going to be fine, either bunkers. And he
Speaker 4: hits his shot and as you know, there's some huge
Speaker 4: trees up there to the left. He hits it over
Speaker 4: the trees or a cut three hundred feet in the
Speaker 4: air and he stops at like ten feet from the hole. Now,
Speaker 4: you couldn't get an l wedge. They didn't have L
Speaker 4: wedges back then. If you were on the if you
Speaker 4: were hitting an L wedge from the left side of
Speaker 4: the fairway from eighty yards, you couldn't have got at
Speaker 4: that post. So he not only did you have to
Speaker 4: have the talent, you had to have the imagination, but
Speaker 4: there was another factor. You had to have the guts
Speaker 4: to try it to Chops. The other one was it
Speaker 4: was right before they had the open, maybe a year
Speaker 4: or two before they open the Tory Pines, and they
Speaker 4: lengthened the course. So Jay's playing with Tiger the last round.
Speaker 4: You know, Jay's like forty nine years old, looks like
Speaker 4: he's got the head cover on his driver when he
Speaker 4: hits it. Compared to Tiger, what year is this, I'm
Speaker 4: going to say, oh four maybe, okay, oh four yep.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna say it was maybe a year or
Speaker 4: two before they they just lengthened it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: It was unbelievably a cloudy, cold day at Torry Pott
Speaker 4: and Jay birdied eight nine and ten and that put
Speaker 4: Tiger in Jade about tide for fit. But they were tied.
Speaker 4: You know, it's kind of cool as even hanging with
Speaker 4: the guy, and it was I remember, like it was
Speaker 4: just there was two hundred and thirty seven downhill and
Speaker 4: the wind's coming in left or right. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just everybody's nightmare. Elevated tea into the wind with a slice.
Speaker 4: And at the time Jay had a five wood and
Speaker 4: like a three iron, but it was like a two
Speaker 4: and a half iron. We are trying to figure out
Speaker 4: every way imaginable can we get a three iron on
Speaker 4: the front of the green and just try to make
Speaker 4: a par because we don't want to hit the five
Speaker 4: wood up in the air because you can just see
Speaker 4: this thing floating over to the thirty creek or something,
Speaker 4: some big toe pop up over there or something. There's
Speaker 4: no way or you're seeing anything good even as a caddium.
Speaker 4: Come on, put that thing ten feet behind your right foot.
Speaker 4: And finally, j being the cool guy that he is,
Speaker 4: said Okay, I'm a tour pro. I should be able
Speaker 4: to hit the five with So he hit a beautiful shot,
Speaker 4: kind of drew it back into the wind pin high
Speaker 4: about thirty feet left of the whole pin. Hi beautiful shot.
Speaker 4: It was there the whole way. And one thing I
Speaker 4: always loved about Jay, Jay always knew who was better
Speaker 4: than him, and he admired it getting beat by people.
Speaker 4: He didn't think they were as good as him. But
Speaker 4: he understood the Watsons and Trevino's Jack Tiger. He knew
Speaker 4: that they had physical capabilities. He didn't, not that he
Speaker 4: wanted to lose to him, but he understood it. So
Speaker 4: Tiger took out this foe iron and he hit this shot,
Speaker 4: and I swear that clubs stopped at waist high. You've
Speaker 4: seen him do it, and DJ can do it too.
Speaker 2: He just does it.
Speaker 4: And he hit this thing. It looked like it was
Speaker 4: about twenty feet off the ground and it just started
Speaker 4: out as the hole and it stayed at the hole
Speaker 4: and it never got higher. And he carried it in
Speaker 4: there about twelve feet from the hole and it was
Speaker 4: like the first time you saw a giraffe. He didn't
Speaker 4: believe it, you know. And we were walking off the
Speaker 4: tee and because Jay would always do this, he went
Speaker 4: to me, how about that shot, which was his way
Speaker 4: of saying, I give So we get down there and
Speaker 4: Jay's putting from the left, Tigers lining up his putt
Speaker 4: and I've always gotten along with Tiger, you know, because
Speaker 4: I met him when he was young for your dad.
Speaker 4: And I don't bother him and never asked him for
Speaker 4: an autograph. I know how to leave him alone, and
Speaker 4: I know, but he's very nice to me if he
Speaker 4: sees me. He couldn't be any nicer because I'm not
Speaker 4: a threat to him. I don't bug him, you know.
Speaker 4: And so he's kneeling down reading this putt and I
Speaker 4: kneel down next to him and I said, you know, Tiger,
Speaker 4: you really haven't been on tour that long. Really, I said,
Speaker 4: you might not want to be looking in our bag
Speaker 4: on part of threes. We're shot makers.
Speaker 2: And he goes with a He's.
Speaker 4: Got a great smile when he smiles when he's in
Speaker 4: comfort Zony with a big smile of his he said, man,
Speaker 4: I didn't know they made fairoy woods. It went dead short.
Speaker 4: But if I can tell one more story, Tommy Lamb,
Speaker 4: who used to caddy for Bob GOLDI anyway on Jay
Speaker 4: at this point he's canty for Faction and they're tied
Speaker 4: with Tiger going to the last round of bay Hill.
Speaker 4: You know what kind of a shot maker's paradise. And
Speaker 4: I got to preface this story by I think the
Speaker 4: next week was maybe the players. Tiger shot sixty six,
Speaker 4: Brad shot seventy five. Tiger told Jay, he said, I
Speaker 4: saw the worst round of golf I've ever seen in
Speaker 4: my life on Sunday with Brad Faction, the worst ball striking,
Speaker 4: he said. As I was going back home, I went
Speaker 4: through Brad's round. He shot seventy five, and I thought,
Speaker 4: if I had my best short game ever, I would
Speaker 4: have shot eighty one. He shot seventy five. So I
Speaker 4: kind of heard this story, didn't think much of it,
Speaker 4: so I don't know. A year or so later, I
Speaker 4: said to Tommy Lamb on Thomas, how do you get
Speaker 4: get paired with Tiger Mutch? To get along on his
Speaker 4: ow was great? So let me tell you the story
Speaker 4: about bay Hill. Well, I already kind of heard this story,
Speaker 4: he said, bad facts and playing. You can't even believe
Speaker 4: bill where he says, he's hitting in the concession stands,
Speaker 4: He's hitting it all over the place, He's shooting ninety
Speaker 4: and we get to the last hole and somehow we're
Speaker 4: still in third place. And as you know, that's a
Speaker 4: you can make anything on that hole. He says. In
Speaker 4: my mind, I'm begging him to drive it in the
Speaker 4: rough so we can pitch out and the worst we're
Speaker 4: going to make his five and we're going to get
Speaker 4: fourth place. See, and I'm going to drive out of there,
Speaker 4: and I hope I don't get arrested. So we're between
Speaker 4: six and seven iron, and I'm not giving him a
Speaker 4: seven iron. No wait, because he didn't hit a ball.
Speaker 4: So I talk him into six and he hits the
Speaker 4: only solid shot of the day and it carries into
Speaker 4: the back bunker, which is fine with me because I
Speaker 4: know you're going to get it up and down. So
Speaker 4: I run up to pick up the divot and somebody
Speaker 4: hits me on the calf for a club and I
Speaker 4: look up and it's Tiger. He said, type Sho has
Speaker 4: got a big smile and his base and said, I
Speaker 4: bet you didn't see that shot coming. He said, how
Speaker 4: do you caddy for this guy? And Tommy said, just
Speaker 4: the way I did. Safety first, you know, so as
Speaker 4: you know the interactions between the players is I always
Speaker 4: wanted to be on the bench at a baseball game,
Speaker 4: or on the dugout, or on the football game. And
Speaker 4: when you're a caddy or a coach, you are the bench.
Speaker 1: Nick dunlop An amateur winning a PGA Tour event.
Speaker 3: What a story.
Speaker 1: And I thought I thought he was going to struggle,
Speaker 1: and he had a little wobble. But I mean JT
Speaker 1: and Sam Burns were the ones that were struck down
Speaker 1: the stretch.
Speaker 4: I think it's all you need to know about golf.
Speaker 4: When I met Jay Hass, he told me his story
Speaker 4: his first west Chester Classic. Alex Alexander was over at Wingfort,
Speaker 4: so he went over to see Lex. You never met
Speaker 4: my dad, so you can imagine what that was like.
Speaker 4: He said, boy, your dad was great to me. I
Speaker 4: couldn't believe how much he knew about my amateur career.
Speaker 4: I said, it was his business. He knew who was good,
Speaker 4: you know. And he was giving a lesson and turned
Speaker 4: that grip over.
Speaker 1: You know what he was doing.
Speaker 4: He was imitating my dad with his hands. You know.
Speaker 4: He had a plaid coat on and stripe pants and everything.
Speaker 4: And he said he was getting ready to leave. I
Speaker 4: was sitting in the cart with him. He kind of
Speaker 4: hit me there, right, get out of here. I got
Speaker 4: to go, and he said. He started to drive off,
Speaker 4: and he stopped and he said, Jay, I just got
Speaker 4: one thing to tell you. He said, I don't know
Speaker 4: what he meant by that's why I'm asking you. He said,
Speaker 4: what's that? Mister Harmony says, the clubbing ball don't know
Speaker 4: your name. He left, and so he said, what does
Speaker 4: that mean? He said that actually was his way of saying,
Speaker 4: you can be as good as you want to be.
Speaker 4: Because Nicholas and Palmer and Watson and Travino, they don't
Speaker 4: have a patent on shooting sixty seven. They're not the
Speaker 4: only ones that can do it. So the club and
Speaker 4: ball doesn't know who's swinging the club. And that was
Speaker 4: his way of saying, you're good and believe in yourself. Well,
Speaker 4: the club and ball didn't know he was an amateur.
Speaker 4: Now the beauty of golf, and you know this is
Speaker 4: no matter how good you are, you have to perform
Speaker 4: every shot, every shot. Sam Byrn's world class player, world
Speaker 4: class player. You know what, he made too bad swings.
Speaker 4: You know what it's happened to every player that's ever lived.
Speaker 4: You make wrong, bad swings at the wrong time. And
Speaker 4: the club and ball didn't know that Dunlop was an
Speaker 4: amateur and he made good swings and he grinded it out.
Speaker 4: But you you came up with the key there. It
Speaker 4: was a passing comment, but it wasn't. He overcame adversity
Speaker 4: early on, and that's what you can't teach, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that cards as soon as it happened. Oh he's going
Speaker 4: to start falter.
Speaker 2: You know what he did?
Speaker 4: Yeah, little pitch shot on eight, you know, in there
Speaker 4: like that, And as you know as a coach, sometimes
Speaker 4: the nerves will show on pitch shots. Yeah, where you've
Speaker 4: got to have great touch. And he came right back
Speaker 4: in a beautiful shot. So your comment was passing, But
Speaker 4: to me it wasn't. It meant that he had whatever
Speaker 4: it took inside. And I'm not too sure you can
Speaker 4: teach that. You can make people better at it, but
Speaker 4: the people that have it naturally, I don't know. You know,
Speaker 4: Brooks is the only player I've seen since Tiger that
Speaker 4: will say I'm going to win this thing tomorrow and
Speaker 4: a major championship.
Speaker 2: And he has that in it.
Speaker 4: No, he does, and he's the only one that will
Speaker 4: say it, and it bothers people because then he backs
Speaker 4: it up. But I don't think you can teach that.
Speaker 4: You told me that when he came on tour. He's
Speaker 4: not afraid of anything. No, he never asked me to
Speaker 4: pick him for the Presidents Cup team. We had a conversation.
Speaker 2: I don't tried to get it.
Speaker 4: Hadn't done enough, you know, for whatever reasons whatever, But
Speaker 4: you said that to me. See, I remember this stuff
Speaker 4: because I actually look at people's insides more than now
Speaker 4: than I look at their swings.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, why because you can't be on tour and have
Speaker 4: a bad swing. We really can't. You can't be good
Speaker 4: enough to have one of those two hundred cards and
Speaker 4: have a bad swing. No, it might not look good,
Speaker 4: it might not have well, you know, as an old
Speaker 4: pro from the Northwest, Jerry Mold said, well, you know,
Speaker 4: some Sam Snead would have They would have thought he
Speaker 4: had a bad swing when the symmetry police showed up
Speaker 4: and started drawing the lines.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So I'm a I have such respect for the talent
Speaker 4: of these players. It's unbelievable how good they are anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're coming out there younger and younger
Speaker 1: and they I mean, I've said this a lot recently.
Speaker 3: There's no apprenticeship now.
Speaker 1: I mean you remember when you played, when when you
Speaker 1: when you were trying to play, when my dad was playing,
Speaker 1: and then when you were caddying early if somebody was
Speaker 1: a rookie, there was a two to three.
Speaker 3: Year apprenticeship maturation, need to.
Speaker 4: Learn the role tournaments or they're good and you.
Speaker 3: Know, And it's not like Jay hows when he turned
Speaker 3: pro he'd won.
Speaker 2: A boatload of college tournaments.
Speaker 4: He won the double A well.
Speaker 1: I mean it was an amazing But I think the
Speaker 1: kids this generation, they have so much access to information
Speaker 1: to fitness, but they just have so much more and
Speaker 1: they can dial the equipment into basically just match whatever
Speaker 1: they do and they have no fear.
Speaker 2: They just don't eat because I.
Speaker 4: Haven't been to a tour event in quite a while,
Speaker 4: and you're out there all the time. So maybe when
Speaker 4: pick up on it as much as I do, there
Speaker 4: was a time when there were about four or five players.
Speaker 4: When they were on the range, you knew that the
Speaker 4: sound of their ball was different. Yeah, And your back
Speaker 4: could be to them and you'd say that Tiger's hit
Speaker 4: an iron shot over there, yea, Or let's Trevino buzzing
Speaker 4: some wedge. You could even be a wedge. And Bill
Speaker 4: was on the range first day practice around hitting balls
Speaker 4: and there's a guy about fifteen yards away, but he
Speaker 4: was kind of a little bit in front of me,
Speaker 4: so I couldn't really see you. It was now, I'm
Speaker 4: telling you, this ball was coming off his club and
Speaker 4: this guy was this strap and looking guy, and I'm
Speaker 4: watching these shots and I'm listening to them and they
Speaker 4: are just so good. Wyndham clark Us opened it and
Speaker 4: I said, why am I? Hey, I didn't even recognize him.
Speaker 4: I've seen in my life other than on TV. And
Speaker 4: plus he was ahead of me, so all I could
Speaker 4: see was his back, and I was just like, Wow,
Speaker 4: this is what the game has become. It's really something.
Speaker 4: The quality of golf today is incredible, and I believe
Speaker 4: that they do set the courses up too easy for
Speaker 4: the abilities that they have. I really do. I don't
Speaker 4: really like watching thirty under them. Yeah, I don't like
Speaker 4: watching your driving a wedge. I just don't like it.
Speaker 4: You know, Wingfoot, a great player, had a great week.
Speaker 4: E Chambeau the only guy that broke car yep, and
Speaker 4: you know what, tied for tenth six over Jean and
Speaker 4: wing Foot played short. Remember the ball it was run,
Speaker 4: was up, but it was running. They didn't driving wedge
Speaker 4: to the ninth tall six yards, but they made you
Speaker 4: drive it straight and they made you plan from there.
Speaker 2: So I don't really like.
Speaker 4: Watching thirty thirty five hunder. I really don't. I like
Speaker 4: to see, uh. I like to see somebody have to
Speaker 4: make four powers on four hard holes coming in to
Speaker 4: win a tournament, that's right. And so I've kind of
Speaker 4: become disenchanted with watching pro golf, and I'm disenchanted with
Speaker 4: all the noise and all that stuff, and I've lost
Speaker 4: a little bit of just every holes are driving a
Speaker 4: wedge and every hole, every part finds are driving a
Speaker 4: six iron. I don't know, it's just and they can
Speaker 4: all do it. It's not like fun guy's doing it.
Speaker 4: Everybody hits it long. You know, Jill hits the three
Speaker 4: hundred yards and he's like one hundred and Thirtieth's joke
Speaker 4: really is we were playing with Shoffley and Canley in
Speaker 4: a practice ground and you know, Bill says, yeah, they're
Speaker 4: you know, doesn't look like much. They're twenty yards ahead
Speaker 4: of me, but that's two clubs. Yeah, you know, they're
Speaker 4: going to get their wedge closer than my seven iron.
Speaker 4: Every time w's four rounds. It's a kind of a mismatch,
Speaker 4: you know so, but you see it and you're you're
Speaker 4: part of it, and you teach it, and you know
Speaker 4: the power game, and so it's cool for me to
Speaker 4: watch it up close. And I have great respect for
Speaker 4: how good they are. They're really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're going to I mean, the story in
Speaker 1: Patty and for Bill this week or last week and
Speaker 1: then getting to Caddy for Jay with all the history
Speaker 1: at New Poor Country Club. It's it's a pretty special
Speaker 1: life that you've been lucky enough to live.
Speaker 4: Well, I've said this a lot, and I'm old enough
Speaker 4: to look back on it and realize this. You're kind
Speaker 4: of in the middle of it, and I hope you
Speaker 4: realize it at all. The Harmon brothers and you at
Speaker 4: our four we're pretty ordinary people and we've lived an
Speaker 4: extraordinary life because of golf. Yeah, we really have to
Speaker 4: forget your accomplishments. As a teacher, I don't like the
Speaker 4: word accomplishments. I like the word experiences. You know, I
Speaker 4: saw you when Brooks wanted Aaron Hills, and I saw
Speaker 4: you hop in the cart. I didn't think about how
Speaker 4: much money you made and all that stuff, how much
Speaker 4: money you made. I thought about how cool. It must
Speaker 4: have been. That's part right now. I mean that, And
Speaker 4: those are the things that you're going to remember. I
Speaker 4: believe when my dad was dying, I was in the
Speaker 4: hospital room with the one time I was too sure
Speaker 4: what he was going to say to me. I'm sure
Speaker 4: your brother, Butch wasn't either when he was alone, and
Speaker 4: he was the opposite of what I thought. And he
Speaker 4: said to me, and I'll never forget this, he said,
Speaker 4: you know, Bill, I lay here and I know what's
Speaker 4: going to happen. And I can honestly tell you I
Speaker 4: never think about one of the masters. I never think
Speaker 4: about being the pro wing foot or sending all that stuff.
Speaker 4: All I think about is family and friends. All the
Speaker 4: other stuff that I thought was important is stuff. But
Speaker 4: that ride in the cart that's important. It is it
Speaker 4: is get a big check and you get all this stuff,
Speaker 4: and that's great. But was that your first major with him?
Speaker 4: It was yeah, yeah, see, and I knew that. And
Speaker 4: so when I look at that stuff, those are the
Speaker 4: things that you're going to remember. You'll spend the money.
Speaker 4: You know, eventually one of your rolexes will break, and
Speaker 4: hope you get it. You never forget that moment. And
Speaker 4: that's what it really is all about.
Speaker 2: To me, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 3: It's been great talking jests.
Speaker 2: We we missed you and we'll hope to see you soon.
Speaker 2: In good job last week.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'll accruit a lot of stories in the next
Speaker 4: three years when you have me on again.
Speaker 3: You got it. I love you, brother to you.
Speaker 1: So that was my uncle, Billy Harmon. Billy was always
Speaker 1: my favorite uncle. And you know, when you get to
Speaker 1: talk to someone, you know he's in his early he's
Speaker 1: in his early seventies. He's been around the game his
Speaker 1: entire life. He has seen so much of golf instruction.
Speaker 1: He was a great player, but I thought his insight
Speaker 1: into kind of caddying and what it kind of takes,
Speaker 1: what it's like. As I said in the intro, Billy
Speaker 1: is a golf instructor. That's what he's known for. But
Speaker 1: the DNA of of who he is as a as
Speaker 1: a person was forged by the years that he cardied
Speaker 1: on the PGA Tour. And anytime I can talk to
Speaker 1: somebody like Billy, that kind of old school kind of
Speaker 1: Raycantur type, you know, storytelling, it's just it's amazing for
Speaker 1: me and I think you can hear how much I
Speaker 1: was laughing in the interview. Billy's always been my favorite uncle.
Speaker 1: He's been out of all my dad's brothers, he's been
Speaker 1: easily been the most supportive.
Speaker 2: Of me in my career.
Speaker 1: And you know, I can't thank him enough for everything
Speaker 1: he's done for me. And I think it's just a
Speaker 1: cool story. I mean, he's had a very unique life.
Speaker 1: He's battled adiction and you know, he has turned his
Speaker 1: life around, and you know he is a deep, deep thinker.
Speaker 1: And hope everybody enjoyed that one, because I know I did.
Speaker 1: Son of It, which comes to you every Wednesday, Rate Review,
Speaker 1: subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks everyone for listening.
Speaker 1: We will see you next week.