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Teeing Off: The Legend of Bagger Byrne Blame the caddie for the oversight that cost Woosie two precious shots
By Michael Bamberger
Woosie, 43, had won a major, the Masters, a decade ago. He had made his millions. The only really important thing left for him to do in golf was win his national championship. That, and play one more Ryder Cup at home. Then he could just about retire. The hour before his tee time was frenzied. On the practice tee he was still experimenting with drivers, undecided about which one to use. The reps were fussing over him. Finally, he settled on a club, went to the practice green, removed the headcover from his 42-inch putter and stroked putts. Peter Coleman, Bernhard Langer's caddie, was standing beside him. "What time are you?" Coleman asked Woosnam. "Two twenty-five," Woosnam replied. "No you're not," Coleman said. "We're off at 2:25." Langer and Duval were the last twosome. Woosnam was playing with Germany's Alex Cejka in the penultimate pairing. Woosnam looked at his caddie of the last 10 weeks, Myles Byrne, and asked, "What time are we?" There are certain caddie essentials. Knowing a player's tee time is an essential. So is counting your player's clubs on the 1st tee. A caddie must be able to count to 14. It's a job requirement. Woosnam made it to the 1st tee with three minutes to spare. Byrne, 25, got around to counting the clubs on the 2nd. "You're going to go ballistic," Byrne said to Woosnam as he prepared to tee off on number 2. "We have two drivers in the bag." Fifteen clubs, one over the limit. That birdie on the 1st? It was now a bogey, with the automatic two-shot penalty. Niclas Fasth had birdied the 7th, so Woosnam now trailed by two. In Oswestry, Wales, Harold Woosnam, Ian's father, watching on television, suddenly felt ill. At the Woodbrook Golf Club, on the south side of Dublin, where Byrne and his two older brothers, both European tour caddies, got their training, the head pro, Billy Kinsella, felt ill. All over the world, people felt ill. "I felt like I had been kicked in the teeth," Woosnam said. "I felt like picking it up and walking in." He played on, but in a daze. He bogeyed the 3rd hole and the 4th. It was an uphill climb from there. Although he got within two strokes of the lead with a birdie at the 13th, Woosnam trailed by three or four shots for most of the back nine and finished in a tie for third place, four shots behind. You may say it is the golfer's responsibility to know how many clubs he has. It is not, not with tour caddies earning $1,000 a week plus 5% of their players' hefty pay. Caddying is a profession. "That's what you pay a caddie for," Woosnam said, and he is correct. The golfer has other things to think about. For 14 years Woosnam had the same caddie, Phill (Wobbly) Morbey, who counted his man's clubs on the 1st tee before every round. In March the two parted ways, amicably. Wobbly went to work for José María Olazábal, and Byrne, an experienced tour caddie, went to work for Woosnam. "He's a good caddie; I'm not going to sack him," Woosie said on Sunday evening. That's what Jean Van de Velde said about his looper, Christophe Angiolini, following their triple-bogey debacle on the 72nd hole in the British Open at Carnoustie two years ago. By the PGA Championship four weeks later, Angiolini was gone. Byrne took all the blame at Royal Lytham. "The buck stops with me," he said. That's the correct thing to say, but it won't be enough. Woosman will probably be on the European Ryder Cup team come September. The odds on poor Byrne making it are long. A man had a chance to win his national championship, and now that chance is gone.
Issue date: July 30, 2001
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