If you’re a caddie, you’re bound to be looking for a new player every now and then. So I guess you could say I’m one of the blessed ones to have been working with the same guy for so long.
By Ted Scott with Jeff Hopper
Look, competition is competition. I know a lot of golf fans think that Bubba’s shaping a shot around the trees to win his first Masters is the height of pressure, but have you ever stood nervously with two foosball rods buried in your palms trying to win a world championship? No, probably not. Sorry. You do know what foosball is, right?
When I was a senior in high school, I would spend my open class period at my neighbor’s pool hall. I was a kid with some free time who wanted something to do, so I shot pool.
But when I turned 18 and could start going into the hall at night, I heard a bunch of commotion in the back. People were hooting and hollering, getting real loud. It sounded like the greatest competition ever, and the curiosity killed me.
“If you’re a caddie, you’re bound to be looking for a new player every now and then. So I guess you could say I’m one of the blessed ones to have been working with the same guy for so long.”
When I went back and saw what these people were doing at the foosball table, I was fascinated. I had no idea you could play it like that, with that kind of control and that kind of skill. I’m a big believer in learning from experts, so I started asking around, “Who can teach me how to do this?” The players pointed me to the tournament organizer, who was a state champion and who agreed to teach me for free if I paid my way into his tournament each week. Five dollars. I was in.
Eventually, when between college transfers, I turned my attention to foosball. I started traveling around and in 1994, my partner and I won the amateur doubles world championship. It consumed me, the way any sport can. I loved it, I was good at it, and now I was a champion.
I know that some of you might be laughing. You’ve probably never seen a real foosball tournament. Most people laugh when they find out that there is a foosball tournament. But I don’t care what it is—tennis, golf, basketball, foosball—when you’re nervous and you can perform, that’s the essence of competition.
I guess you could say that I’ve never left competition, though how I wound up as a professional caddie is a pretty funny story. I was playing some mini-tour events in 1999, trying to make my way as a golfer, when the Web.com Tour (Nationwide Tour at the time) came to my hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. I tried to Monday qualify but didn’t make it, so I called the course and asked about caddying. They told me to come out on Tuesday and check in with the caddie master. So I went out to the course, but I had a fever of 101 that day, so I wasn’t in condition to help anybody. Still the caddie master introduced me to Grant Waite, who said, “Let’s go get in nine holes now.”
I said, “I can’t caddie today.”
He said, “What?”
I said, “I’m sick. I should be good by Thursday.”
Somehow he was willing to wait. But when Thursday came, I was not any more ready. We stood together on the tenth tee, where we were starting, and Grant asked me, “How far is to cover that bunker?”
I said, “A two-iron.”
He retorted, “It might be a two-iron for you, but I don’t know how far you hit a two-iron. How far does it say it is to carry that bunker in your yardage book?”
I said, “I don’t have a yardage book.”
He was indignant. “You don’t have a yardage book!?”
“What do I need a yardage book for? You’re the pro.”
In a flash I found myself running to the pro shop for a yardage book. I came back madly flipping through the pages to get to the tenth hole. I found the bunker and said, “It’s 201 to cover.”
He pulled out a two-iron.
Maybe you’re already getting a picture of how Bubba Watson and I have now worked together for 12 seasons. My time with Grant got me off to an important start, and I learned a lot about the caddie’s role, but it can also be a bit unstable, with players switching out guys every two or three years. Sometimes it’s not the caddie’s fault. The player just doesn’t perform well enough to stay on tour. Whatever the reason, if you’re a caddie, you’re bound to be looking for a new player every now and then. So I guess you could say I’m one of the blessed ones to have been working with the same guy for so long.
The truth is, I love Bubba. We’re very similar in personality. We like slapstick humor, we’re both silly, we’re immature for people our age as far as cutting up. We just like to have a good time.
Aside from that, he is honestly one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. He has a huge heart. Some fans might say, “Yeah, but Ted, you know that time when he…” And yes, there have been times when he’s treated me harshly in the moment or behaved in a way that looks bad. I get that, because I know I’ve treated people harshly myself when I didn’t mean it. We all have. But you know what? When Bubba does things wrong, he admits it.
One more thing, and this may surprise you. I love the fact that you see people’s weaknesses in competition, because it shows that they’re human. When I see someone who is good at something make a mistake, I think, Oh, I can relate to that. We all have problems we deal with. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. But when your job has you working in front of millions of fans, it does set you up for criticism. I can’t put out every fire for Bubba, but I can tell you for sure that he’s willing to change.
In 2010 Bubba and I had a discussion. His attitude was keeping him from performing well, because he was carrying his emotions from shot to shot. From that conversation, Bubba decided, I’m not going to take it to the next shot. And that’s really when he became the player he is now. Soon after, he won his first tournament, and you know the rest: two-time Masters champion, a World Golf Championships win, and nine victories overall.
If you see Bubba upset now, he’s just getting the frustration out. He’s leaving it behind him before the next shot. You have to work with who you are emotionally, and Bubba is always going to be one of the guys who shows his emotions more. But I think one of the mistakes we can make is to take the personality out of the player. If you told Zach Johnson to act like Lee Trevino and talk it up, he probably wouldn’t be a very good golfer. The same is true the other way.
As a caddie, it’s part of your job to figure out which type of player your guy is and encourage him to do that. Of course, there are days where he might be emotional, but it’s not the right kind of emotion and you say, “Come on, let’s not focus on that.” But if he’s just out there fired up and competing and he gets frustrated because he hits a good putt and it lips out, I’m all for it. That means he’s in it. Even the quiet guys on Tour that you don’t see erupt emotionally, we get to hear some of the stuff they say and do. Everybody goes through it.
So I’m a big fan of just letting your personality shine. That’s what makes us all unique as individuals. I definitely don’t try to curb that unless it’s detrimental to his game, which it very seldom is.
Now you may be asking what a caddie’s life is like in general. Two things, I’d say: a lot of time on the road and a lot of time on your feet.
My wife Melanie and I have two children, so I’m always thinking about family. First off, Melanie and I have an understanding that if my time away ever gets to be too much, she can tell me. I’ll ask her periodically, “Hey, listen, do you want me to find something else to do?” If you have a wife that’s not understanding of that and doesn’t enjoy that aspect of your job, I don’t think you should continue to pursue that type of career. I want her to have freedom to speak and say, “It’s too much. I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
But I’ve also calculated the hours. As it turns out, I get more time with my family than I would if I was working a nine-to-five job. I don’t see them every night, but when I’m home I get to hang out with my wife and kids all the time, which is great because we are an active crew. Melanie grew up in a house full of nine kids, so they were always looking to get outside, and we do the same thing with our two. We play basketball and tennis and volleyball and soccer and we swim. My kids are adventurous. They’ll go outside and find stuff, pick up bugs, get their hands dirty. And they don’t like shoes!
“When I met Melanie, I had my own ideas about God. Basically, He was a crutch that I would take out of the closet when my leg was broken. I’d walk around with Him for a little while, then put Him back when I didn’t need Him anymore.”
When I met Melanie, I had my own ideas about God. Basically, He was a crutch that I would take out of the closet when my leg was broken. I’d walk around with Him for a little while, then put Him back when I didn’t need Him anymore.I think that last part is funny, because my job is all about the shoes. A while back there was a tour caddie named Todd Montoya, who wore a pedometer. He said he averaged 11 miles a day. Now Bubba doesn’t usually play much of a practice round, but he’s in every pro-am and he doesn’t miss too many cuts, so I’m typically walking about 55 miles a week. Remember, too, that I’m doing that with what amounts to a 50-pound suitcase hanging from one side of my body. No wonder you see a lot of old caddies start to get limps or crooked looking bodies. You have to be sure to take care of yourself if you don’t want to go through surgery or pain later on. You also have to be on the constant lookout for good shoes. That’s not easy when you wear size 13 and your feet are about one inch wide, like mine. I’ve got some long, skinny feet!
Like everyone, I get asked what I do and when I tell people, a lot of them say, “Really? That must be a fun, easy job.” But you’ll often have players invite a friend or family member to caddie for a week, and by the time they’re done, they’re saying, “Man, that’s hard.”
Life is the same, you know. The miles add up. Some days are an easy walk and others are more like climbing a mountain. In either case, you have to learn to slow down and take a look around.
When Bubba won his first Masters in 2012, it came on Easter Sunday. We were standing in the fifteenth fairway at Augusta National looking down to the green, waiting to play. It was so pretty of a day. Gorgeous. All I could think about was the resurrection of Jesus. I was blown away with one thought: Oh wow, man, He rose! Here we were, trying to win a golf tournament, and God was touching my heart.
This wasn’t a new thing for me. When I met Melanie, I had my own ideas about God. Basically, he was a crutch that I would take out of the closet when my leg was broken. I’d walk around with him for a little while, then put him back when I didn’t need him anymore. I would tell her, “Oh God is like this, and God wants me to do that.” And Melanie, who had grown up in church, would look at me and say, “Well, the Bible says this.” That always caught me off guard, because I’d never read the Bible.
When I proposed to Melanie, she said yes, but she also insisted that we go to church. One time, Melanie went up after the service ended to talk to the pastor. I went up too. He asked me, “What are you doing up here? You got questions?” I told him I did, and we agreed to meet that week. That was the day I allowed Jesus into my life. He is my Lord and Savior.
At the beginning I told you that all competition is pretty much the same. What I discovered when I won that foosball championship was that it left me with one big question: Is that it? I just knew there had to be something else, something more to life.
I think everyone has similar questions deep down. They may not slow down enough to admit it, but those questions are there. Those questions jump up when we set a goal, achieve it, have fun doing it, and then find ourselves asking, “Now what?”
For me, the gospel of Jesus Christ changed my life because it took away the doubt that there is a purpose in what I’m doing. There is something greater than winning the Masters as a caddie or winning the world championship as a foosball player or having the biggest house or being the biggest movie star or owning the biggest internet company. There’s something greater to this life than that, and that’s really what the gospel of Jesus Christ has been for me. It showed me that as plain as day.
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