Day One

Players are a superstitious bunch – golfers are a superstitious bunch. How often have you been out for a Saturday morning knock around your home golf club and the guy you’re playing with - friend or opponent - sifts through the bottom of the bag for a lucky ball marker or certain colour of tee or asks for a certain number on his Pinnacle from the pro shop? Imagine what it's like when you’re on tour and playing for a living. Yeah – pretty insane.

To some it really matters which bay they use to warm up on, whether they practice putting first or after the range, what colour underwear they’re wearing will determine far more than you think – lucky pants don’t just make an appearance at the nightclub I can tell you.

A caddy’s job is to figure this kind of insanity out early on with a player and accept it. It matters to them so it’s best just to go along with it rather than try and change them. We all know it’s garbage but what can you do?

So with her lucky lingerie on (her not you), practice done on the right bay at the right time, and the right breakfast inside them, it’s time for a wander to the tee and a pep talk from yours truly.

Goals are the objective. Players like goals. At this point we slip on the old motivational speaker’s head and remind them what they’re doing, the goals we discussed over a coffee earlier and remind them of the game plan we practiced on the range. It’s an important part of the job and one often overlooked by those who are still considering us simply bag carriers.

Feeling more positive than a balloon freshly rubbed on Grandpa’s Christmas jumper, we step on the first tee and exchange pleasantries with our fellow competitors. The girls swap scorecards as you would do on a Saturday morning medal and once we’ve donned our bibs and talked about the weather and other convivial banter, it’s time to finally get on with it. There's a lot of hanging around in this job - you arrive on Monday and when you finally tee it up on Thursday you'll see a lot of players and caddies chomping at the bit to get on the tee.

Some players get really nervous at this point. Never understood that. It’s just a game of golf. It’s what you do. It’s how you got to this point. You probably hit over a thousand balls a day and all you have to do is hit another one. Simples.

A last-minute reminder of their capabilities and a final semi-sincere offer of good fortune to your fellow playing partners and she’ll stripe one down the middle – hopefully – and you’re off. All the talk and discussion and practice, hopes and dreams have led to this moment so in the words of Eminem in Lose Yourself, “Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment would you capture it or let it slip? You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow ‘cause opportunity comes once in a lifetime. ”

Too true.