Bones Mackay returns to the Presidents Cup this week as a reporter on the course for NBC.
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MONTREAL – Most of the changes in golf over the past three decades can be measured in money.
However, this week, they can be measured in fabric.
“When I caddied in 1994, I was obviously there all week.” Bones Mackay says. “They gave us three golf shirts to get us through the seven days and put us up in a noisy motel on the outskirts of town.”
Mackay pauses for a beat. A smile is passing between his deeply tanned skin and white teeth. His voice drops.
“This week, the players are staying in the same hotel as the players, riding to and from the pitch with the players, having lockers next to the players,” says Mackay. “It speaks to how much has changed — not just in golf, but in this event.”
Indeed, the Presidents Cup is changing and no one knows that better than Mackay. In 2024, it will probably continue at most impressive ironman streak: worked… all of them from them. Starting in 1994 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, where he was invited to a newbie on the American team named Phil Mickelson … and continuing until 2024 at Royal Montreal, where he is a reporter on the course in his second tour of duty for NBC. The weight of the last 30 years in pro golf hangs over Mackay like one of those early 90s golf tees hangs over the elbows, but time has imparted a certain wisdom. In ’24 Mackay knows things he didn’t know in ’94, and this week, that means something surprising: The Presidents Cup, he says, becomes real.
“Going to the last one there in Charlotte, you had amazing crowds and amazing weather,” Mackay says. “There was a moment there on Sunday where I wasn’t so sure the USA was going to win. He got very close there. I just remember thinking to myself, sure it’s not the Ryder Cup, but the President’s Cup has grown by leaps and bounds.”
As a paid voice to care about the Presidents Cup, there are arguably more unbiased sources of Presidents Cup optimism in the world of golf. But if you’ve ever heard Mackay on television, you know he’s been gifted with some kind of golf synesthesia — his brain works in such a way that you see the same golf scenes as the rest of us, but we experience them differently. Usually, this looks like the scene at the 2019 Presidents Cup, when Mackay witnessed Haotong Li hitting a tee shot on the third hole at Royal Melbourne. To the rest of us, it looked like a typical shot, but Mackay knew something was wrong.
“I remember thinking to myself,They will make him play again”, says Mackay, as he did further was then broadcast by NBC.
Mackay was right. Li was offside and the internationals were forced to replay their shot, changing the complexion of their match.
In hindsight, he says now, that was just one of several moments in the intervening years that changed the face of the Cup – and changed his perception of the event’s future.
“There are times when this event has become acute,” Mackay said. “It’s fun to see it up close.”
These, he admits, are not the sweeping evidence of change in the Presidents Cup that most fans are looking for. And it is true that the existence of a serious competition depends on a more level clash between the sides, which has only ever seen one international victory. But Mackay’s point isn’t that change is here, it’s that change is coming.
After all, big changes are usually the product of many small changes before them. Things like new hotels, or equipment drops so big that Mackenzie Hughes was losing her clothes WITHIN those.
“That’s probably ten times what I thought was coming our way,” he said. “My hotel room is full of stuff. It’s hard to find things. The first day I couldn’t find the belt. I was beltless.”
Perhaps what happens between the ropes this week will lend some credence to Mackay’s claims. But even if not, Bones won’t have to look far to see what’s changed at the event over the past 30 years.
It’s right there in the wardrobe.
