fire your caddie

“Fire you caddie!” This is something I’ve said to my competitive juniors while on the golf course during a playing lesson. It’s usually met with a puzzled look because they’re never sure what I mean. I’ll follow up my original statement by asking them to identify their caddie, knowing full well that they won’t be able to do it. I’ll finally come clean and point out to them that for all intents and purposes, they are their own caddie. This realization will drive home the point I was trying to make in the first place – that young golfers often say and do things that they wouldn’t tolerate if someone else – a caddie for example – were doing or saying the same things.
What a Good Caddie Would Do
Anyone that’s been around the game understands how important a caddie can be and how many things that a good caddie can do to help his or her player perform well. Here’s a list of what would be expected from a caddie:

• Preview a course in advance of a tournament to become familiar with the setup, the speed of the greens, the texture of the bunkers, the locations of the hazards, and the strategy required to play the course well.
• Prepare and ensure that a player’s golf bag has everything that might be required including tees, balls, gloves, towel, bad weather gear, water, food, sunscreen, first aid items, etc.
• Keep clubs clean.
• Study and mark down pin locations assuming a pin sheets was given out.
• Help with shot selection by identifying and calculating temperature, wind, lie, hazards, yardages, etc.
• Look for clues and trends that could help with in-round adjustments.
• Provide important reminders, stay positive, and encourage players before, during, and after shots.
• Remain calm even in stressful situations.

What Junior Golfers Do
In contrast, I’ve seen countless examples of junior golfers who say and do exactly the opposite and think nothing of it. Here are some actual examples I’ve witnessed on the course in junior golf tournaments:

• Played an important tournament with no course knowledge because they hadn’t played a practice round.
• Forgot to check their golf bag before the tournament for essential items and then showed up on the first tee without tees or water.
• Never pulled out the pin sheet during the entire round.
• On multiple occasions, either forget to calculate or didn’t bother to calculate the wind direction or wind speed when choosing a club.
• Was too upset to notice that they had missed the green short and to the right on each of the first three holes and never considered making an adjustment.
• Screamed out loud “you never make these putts” after they missed a short putt for par.
• Displayed their frustration by teeing off first on every hole even though they didn’t have the lowest score on the previous hole.

Actions and behaviors like these are all too common for competitive junior golfers and make no sense for any golfer that cares about his or her score. It’s plainly obvious and I’m sure we can all agree that if any of us had a caddie that acted poorly or said the things that younger golfers say to themselves, we’d fire them at the first opportunity or refuse to use them in the future.
In golf, there are many things beyond our control, but our actions, words, and internal dialogue are well within our control. As long as a junior golfers carry their own bags, it only makes sense that they learn how to be the best caddie possible…one that is truly helpful.