meant the opposite: Call to confirm that you can work for me. “In those days he probably figured there was a chance a kid like me would just go home and not show up again,” Bruce said. “But I got it confused and didn’t call.”
As a result, not having heard from Bruce, Shaw showed up on Tuesday with another caddy. Bruce was upset. Shaw, who felt bad, told him of another player, Ron Cerrudo, who was looking for a caddy. “That’s what was so different in those days,” Bruce said. “There were so few full-time caddies that you could almost always show up at a place and get a bag. Now, because there’s so much more money to be made and there are so many more caddies, it’s much, much harder.”
This was 1973—$15 a day and 3 percent of purses that averaged about $150,000 (total) per week, as opposed to 2003, when most full-time caddies work on an annual salary and get 5 percent when their player makes a cut, 7 percent when he top-tens, and 10 percent for a win. That’s on a tour where the average weekly purse is now $4 million. Back then losing a bag was both common and hardly upsetting. Bruce found Cerrudo and worked for him that week. They missed the cut, making Bruce three-for-three. Cerrudo was as generous as Bruce’s first two employers, paying him $100 and telling him he could work for him the following week when the tour went to Robinson, Illinois, for the Robinson Shriners’ Classic.
He still hadn’t caddied on a weekend, but Bruce was proud of the fact that all three players he had worked for had paid him far more than they had to and that two of them had asked him to work again. He was having fun and Leahey had now joined him, having worked in Milwaukee for a local pro who had missed the cut. The two of them headed for Robinson, Bruce with a bag for the week, Bill without one.
Three weeks and $300 into his caddying career, Bruce figured he was doing okay.
3
“We’ll Try It for a Week”
WHEN ONE LOOKS AT THE PGA Tour and what it has evolved into today, it is sometimes hard to imagine what it was like only thirty years ago. Purses were one-thirtieth of what they are now week in and week out. Most players traveled from event to event by car, flying only when the drive would take more than a day and buying the cheapest airline ticket available whenever that occurred. Caddies also drove, often driving a player’s car when he chose to fly. If the trip took more than a day, sleeping was usually done by taking turns in the car or pulling over to a rest stop and finding a comfortable patch of grass to curl up on.
The tour back then played a lot of small and midsized towns, more often than not avoiding the big cities because there was too much competition from the mainstream sports there. Towns like Greensboro, North Carolina; Jacksonville and Tallahassee, Florida; Columbus, Georgia; and Hartford were as likely to host tour events as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, more likely to host them than places like Atlanta, Washington, and San Francisco, to name three major cities that didn’t have tour stops. Robinson, in southern Illinois, was one of the smaller towns on the circuit, the home of the annual Robinson Shriners’ Classic, which tells you who put the tournament on. In those days there were almost no corporate title sponsors and only a handful of tournaments were seen on live TV.
Robinson followed Milwaukee on the calendar in 1973, the tour taking a midsummer swing through the Midwest, with St. Louis on the schedule after Robinson. Bruce Edwards and Bill Leahey, having both missed the cut in Milwaukee, headed down the road to Robinson and began looking for a place to stay. In most towns on tour, caddies would usually split a room four ways, breaking down the beds in a double room so that two guys could split a mattress and a box spring between them.
“We never went into a place if the room cost more than twelve dollars a night,” Bruce remembered. “We’d get into a room and the
As a result, not having heard from Bruce, Shaw showed up on Tuesday with another caddy. Bruce was upset. Shaw, who felt bad, told him of another player, Ron Cerrudo, who was looking for a caddy. “That’s what was so different in those days,” Bruce said. “There were so few full-time caddies that you could almost always show up at a place and get a bag. Now, because there’s so much more money to be made and there are so many more caddies, it’s much, much harder.”
This was 1973—$15 a day and 3 percent of purses that averaged about $150,000 (total) per week, as opposed to 2003, when most full-time caddies work on an annual salary and get 5 percent when their player makes a cut, 7 percent when he top-tens, and 10 percent for a win. That’s on a tour where the average weekly purse is now $4 million. Back then losing a bag was both common and hardly upsetting. Bruce found Cerrudo and worked for him that week. They missed the cut, making Bruce three-for-three. Cerrudo was as generous as Bruce’s first two employers, paying him $100 and telling him he could work for him the following week when the tour went to Robinson, Illinois, for the Robinson Shriners’ Classic.
He still hadn’t caddied on a weekend, but Bruce was proud of the fact that all three players he had worked for had paid him far more than they had to and that two of them had asked him to work again. He was having fun and Leahey had now joined him, having worked in Milwaukee for a local pro who had missed the cut. The two of them headed for Robinson, Bruce with a bag for the week, Bill without one.
Three weeks and $300 into his caddying career, Bruce figured he was doing okay.
3
“We’ll Try It for a Week”
WHEN ONE LOOKS AT THE PGA Tour and what it has evolved into today, it is sometimes hard to imagine what it was like only thirty years ago. Purses were one-thirtieth of what they are now week in and week out. Most players traveled from event to event by car, flying only when the drive would take more than a day and buying the cheapest airline ticket available whenever that occurred. Caddies also drove, often driving a player’s car when he chose to fly. If the trip took more than a day, sleeping was usually done by taking turns in the car or pulling over to a rest stop and finding a comfortable patch of grass to curl up on.
The tour back then played a lot of small and midsized towns, more often than not avoiding the big cities because there was too much competition from the mainstream sports there. Towns like Greensboro, North Carolina; Jacksonville and Tallahassee, Florida; Columbus, Georgia; and Hartford were as likely to host tour events as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, more likely to host them than places like Atlanta, Washington, and San Francisco, to name three major cities that didn’t have tour stops. Robinson, in southern Illinois, was one of the smaller towns on the circuit, the home of the annual Robinson Shriners’ Classic, which tells you who put the tournament on. In those days there were almost no corporate title sponsors and only a handful of tournaments were seen on live TV.
Robinson followed Milwaukee on the calendar in 1973, the tour taking a midsummer swing through the Midwest, with St. Louis on the schedule after Robinson. Bruce Edwards and Bill Leahey, having both missed the cut in Milwaukee, headed down the road to Robinson and began looking for a place to stay. In most towns on tour, caddies would usually split a room four ways, breaking down the beds in a double room so that two guys could split a mattress and a box spring between them.
“We never went into a place if the room cost more than twelve dollars a night,” Bruce remembered. “We’d get into a room and the
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