The time of “show up, keep up and shut up” is long gone for PGA Tour caddies these days, but this Lee Westwood exclusive makes a decent case to bring the old days back.
Westwood took to Twitter to jokingly call out Paul Casey’s caddie, John McLaren, on Saturday for his performance at the WGC-Mexico Championship, in which he apparently was giving his boss pin positions for the opposite-field Puerto Rico Open.
Not that Casey seemed to mind ... he played the three holes he was given bad information on in 3 under, going par-eagle-birdie on 10, 11 and 12 and eventually carded a third-round 65.
Small shout out today to @Paul_Casey caddie #johnnylongsocks . -3 after 3 holes and then realised he was giving Paul the pin positions for the @PGATOUR event that’s happening in Puerto Rico! Nice one Johnny!🤣🤣🤣 @Fooch1993 @gareth_lord
— Lee Westwood (@WestwoodLee) February 23, 2019
Casey confirmed Westwood’s story in a comment on Instagram after the round:
“Yes it’s true,” he wrote. “We played the first 3 holes to positions (yardages) on the green so the flag position didn’t matter per se. The first time I asked for a total distance to the flag was the 4th hole of the day and it didn’t match with my calculations. So we didn’t technically make a mistake but it’s still bloody funny!!”
The funny situation had others on Twitter remembering caddie blunders from their past, including this doozy from Luke Donald, when his caddie was looking at the wrong hole while trying to read the green.
Reminds me of the time I was trying out a greens book at TPC Boston and I asked JLS to look at the book - he says “slightly right to left” I said “R U sure, looks like it goes to the right” It went right - turns out he was looking at the wrong hole 🤦🏼♂️
— Luke Donald (@LukeDonald) February 23, 2019
As bad as that is, it could always be worse. At least those caddies were wearing shoes on both feet.