So there’s this guy at our golf club who keeps asking me if I have any spare balls or gloves.
The reason he asks me is because he happened to be listening once when I was telling some of the guys what tour pros get given each week, and mistakenly thinks I’ll have some for him which, because I basically can’t stand him (think golf club bore), I never have. Nor will I ever.
That aside though, and at the risk of generating mass green-eyed envy amongst the ranks of club golfers everywhere, here’s what tour pros do actually get given every week.
All of it is free and all of it is down to me to collect from the manufacturers’ tour trucks that you might have seen parked up next to the range. That’s every tour caddies’ first job on a Monday morning when we get to the course.
These tour trucks are basically golfing Aladdin’s caves, stocked full of anything a tour pro needs that week, as well as stuff they just fancy getting or trying because, at the end of the day, everyone likes free stuff, don’t they? Some guys are still like kids in a candy store many years into their careers.
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The main part of every tour truck is a huge workshop area with every single tool and device known to man in it to build, bend or adjust every club in the bag. There are pigeon-hole-like shelves with basically every single shaft known to man.
Tour bags are sitting there with any new or adjusted clubs our employers have requested to be built or adjusted for them since last week. While in some of the tour vans – and Titleist is easily the best for this – there are even comfortable seats for you to park yourself down on if you have to wait for any reason.
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Anyway, as a caddie, firstly you pick up THE essential items for the week: the golf balls. Generally, each player gets three dozen new balls to use each week. After all, they may play a practice round, the pro-am, and four tournament rounds. But it doesn’t matter if last week you only played one practice round and MC’d Friday: you still get three dozen new balls the next Monday.
Then there are gloves. Most manufacturers give their contracted players four new gloves every week and to be clear, no one out here uses a glove until that ugly little hole appears on the thumb. In fact, some players use a new glove for every tournament round and others need more than one per round as they’re prone to a glove rip after an errant shot: so as their caddie, it’s always best to have a new one in your bib or pocket.
This leaves me to pick up a new towel if we need one, and possibly a new hat or beanie for myself (he gets his sent to his house), grab a large handful of branded tees to avert a “tee crisis” when the ground is firm and he breaks one every hole, and check whether there’s any new clubs, clothes, waterproofs, shoes, or umbrella waiting for him that he might have ordered last week, before heading to neatly arrange everything in his locker.
Now all this stuff might be enough to keep anyone reading this going for a year or so. But not your average tour pro. This is only enough to last him until next week which is when I’ll be making another trip to the candy store for him.
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