The boxes for top tour pros play valuable roles and are paid accordingly.
Getty Images
About 50 years ago, long before he worked for the likes of Curtis Strange, Greg Norman AND Payne StewartMike Hicks landed his first caddy job, holding for a local pastor at his hometown club in North Carolina. Hicks was 12. His pay was $5 per loop.
In those days, caddying was hardly considered a viable career. With rare exceptions, it was seen as a hindrance to those with no better options, or a summer gig for the Danny Noonans of the world. Hicks didn’t see it as a way to make a living.
“I never had that idea,” he says.
In 1980, however, as an undergraduate at North Carolina State, Hicks was considering taking a semester off when a friend who had attended Tour pro JC Snead encouraged him to join him in California and tag along. along to the beat of the West Coast.
“He said, ‘You can work the pro-am, and some qualifiers on Monday. You’ll make it,” says Hicks.
Hicks left home with $140 and returned eight weeks later after having a blast and doubling his money. He was 19. There was no looking back.
For Hicks, it was the start of a decades-long run as a respected tour looper (an image of Hicks leaping into Stewart’s arms after his boss created ’99 US Open is part of the game’s iconography). He is now 63, recently retired from the county. And the trade he plied has been completely transformed.
Getty Images
Caddying these days does more than pay the bills. At high-end clubs and resorts, loopers routinely earn six-figure incomes. Caddies for the top Tour pros are multimillionaires. The work is professionalized. However, what is often missing is formalized professional training.
That’s something Hicks is trying to change.
A founding member of the Tour Caddy Collective, a network dedicated to developing the next generation of caddies, Hicks has teamed up with fellow Tour Loopers Grant Berry and Heath Holt to launch the Professional Caddy Certification Program. Operated in conjunction with North Carolina State University’s Office of Professional Development, the program aims to provide 18 participants with seven days and one night of intensive learning covering every aspect of the job. The inaugural session begins on December 1.
“We’re going to go into all the nuances,” Hicks says.
In building clichés, caddying has three basic requirements: Show, Continue, and Shut Up.
This no longer applies.
For starters, Hicks says, “It’s the opposite of ‘shut up.'” At the elite levels, however, most players expect open communication, a point made every time the television networks eavesdrop. Michael Greller and Jordan Spieth. From one partnership to another, and from one stroke to another, a caddy’s role can change from assistant to psychologist to bodyguard and beyond. Quantitative skills are increasingly essential. So is emotional intelligence.
“A player-caddie relationship is like a marriage,” Hicks says. “But you also have to be a mathematician. You are not just adding and subtracting. You are dealing with percentages. You’re analyzing statistics and using live data to help guys with course management.”
To help participants prepare for those extensive demands, Hicks says the program will be taught by a variety of instructors, including a sports psychologist, a physical therapist, a PGA Tour official and experts in technology such as Trackman, Aimpoint and GC Quad.
There will even be a class in CPR.
“You tell me how many people out there know CPR,” Hicks says. “Hardly any, I’ll tell you that.”
Even as they take care of their players, Hicks says, caddies must learn to take care of themselves.
“Stretching is a vital part of caddying,” says Hicks. “You have to eat well and rest properly.”
On those fronts, Hicks admits, he failed in his career.
“It’s pretty much a miracle I’m still here,” he says.
But time is a great teacher and he now has a chance to share what he has learned with others. Although the plan is for the program to be repeated regularly, a long-term plan has not yet been decided. A second hearing is tentatively scheduled for February. But December’s inaugural session, Hicks says, is “a pilot” that he expects to develop over time. The cost is $4,000 per participant.
“We want to do it,” he says. “And we’ll see where it leads.”
For more information, go.ncsu.edu/golf-caddie-cert or contact info@tourcaddiecollective.com.
