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Last weekend, the hottest golfer on the planet won The Masters in Augusta, Georgia. It was his fourth win his last six PGA starts. Before 2022, Scottie Scheffler had never won a golf tournament on the PGA Tour. Now, he is on fire.
What changed? His caddie!
Lafayette, Louisiana native Ted Scott previously handled PGA Tour professional Bubba Watson’s bag for 15 seasons. The team won two Masters’ titles together in the previous ten seasons.
Unfortunately, Bubba Watson has admitted to struggling with some anxiety-related issues in addition to a lingering wrist problem last season. The family-oriented Watson began to seriously consider retiring from professional golf at the young age of 43. He suggested that his long-time caddie, Ted Scott, should look for another professional golfer to assist on the bag.
In what has turned out to be an incredibly fortunate series of events for all parties, the up and coming (but winless) PGA professional named Scottie Scheffler was seeking a new caddie and decided to link-up with Ted Scott on his golf bag to start 2022. Scott’s unique personality immediately meshed with the buttoned-up Scheffler, and it has been pure magic out on the golf course in 2022.
Ted Scott said recently, “I was going to retire last November to teach more golf. Then I got the call from Scottie and talked with my family and prayed about it for a week. They said to go work for Scottie, and here we are.”
Last Sunday, Scottie Scheffler (with Ted Scott alongside as his caddie) won the 2022 Masters by posting a 10-under par score to grab his fourth PGA Tour win in the past six starts. In less than two months, Scheffler has zoomed up the board to become the #1 ranked golfer in the world. For caddie Ted Scott, Sunday’s win at The Masters marks his third win in the past eleven years at Augusta National Golf Club.
During the first few months of 2022, Scottie Scheffler has now earned about $9 million.
Based on the traditional caddie pay of about 10% of the pro golfer’s winnings, Ted Scott has banked nearly $1 million for his family this spring!
Bubba Watson, who also participated in this year’s Masters field but finished at 7-over par for the tournament, was very happy for his former caddie’s success. He said, “Very thankful and awesome for a friend of mine to have a great bag like that, right? Ted can now teach another young kid leadership like he taught me for, what, 15 years.”
Scottie Scheffler knows that his new caddie, Ted Scott, is something special. Check out the reverence which the hottest golfer on the men’s tour speaks about his new caddie.
“Teddy is a really peaceful guy. He doesn’t really react too much. We talk about pretty much every shot. So I can’t remember a shot in which he didn’t help me unless I was tapping in. We talk about everything out there, and that helps me prepare to hit a good shot and just be committed to what I’m doing.”
The relationship between a professional golfer and the caddie isn’t simply about toting a 50-pound golf bag over six miles per day several times per week. A professional golfer’s caddie must be in sync with the golfer’s style of play and mental attitude.
In much the same way you can open-up and relate to your best friend or spouse, the best golfing tag-teams usually feature a caddie who knows the golfer’s strengths and weaknesses and recognizes the best ways to help the golfer make small physical and mental adjustments at any particular moment on the golf course.
When successful, two heads can be better than one.
Let’s say the pro golfer is someone like Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus (during his heyday). If the golfer is very intense and has a strong-willed personality, their best match for a caddie is likely to be someone who accepts the role of a quiet supporter. When the golfer finally consults with the caddie about a specific yardage, wind direction, or other variable in the golfer’s mind, that caddie must be able to provide a very clear short answer to the golfer while conveying a high degree of certainty.
The younger and less experienced (and sometimes more personally shy) professional golfers often hire a wise and more mature caddie to add experience to the team. For 26-year old Scottie Scheffler, the addition of a highly successful PGA Tour caddie like the 50-ish Ted Scott means that the young golfer can count on his caddie to bring years of course knowledge at any time necessary.
There is no doubt that Scottie Scheffler has been counting on his new caddie every step of the way in 2022. This bond of mutual trust is a very special commodity on tour. Many professional golfers cycle through new caddies nearly every season as they search for the perfect match.
In researching this story, I learned that there is actually a Caddie Hall of Fame!
Based in Chicago, the Caddie Hall of Fame was established in 1999 and, since 2011, has been under the governance of the Western Golf Association. The Caddie Hall of Fame brings back some great memories of professional golf’s biggest names and their talented sidekick on the golf bag.
Who can forget Jack Nicklaus’ long-time caddie named Angelo Argea.
The tall silver-haired caddy immigrated to the US from Greece, worked in concert with Jack Nicklaus for over twenty years and was a part of several of the Golden Bear’s 18 major championship wins. Argea’s stoic attitude was nearly a mirror of Nicklaus’ focused demeanor on the golf course.
Then there’s the affable Lee Trevino whose caddy, Herman Mitchell, was absolutely indispensable to his golf success.
A native of Little Rock, Mitchell (a very large man who weighed nearly 300 pounds and towered over Lee Trevino) was frequently seen helping his pro golfer line-up important putts while frequently engaging in some spicy chatter with the non-stop talking Trevino. This dynamic duo’s friendly bickering usually helped reduce the pressure off Trevino and led to six major championships together.
Tiger Woods won 13 of his 15 major championships with caddie Steve Williams on his golf bag.
Another Hall-of-Fame caddie, “Stevie” reportedly pocketed over $12 million from his dozen years of toting the golf bag for Tiger Woods. The two would split-up during Tiger’s later years. Williams then took the bag for fellow Australian golfer, Adam Scott, and helped him to win the 2013 Masters.
The long-time caddie for Tom Watson was also inducted into the Caddie Hall-of-Fame.
Bruce Edwards worked for Tom Watson during all eight of his major championships and 35 PGA Tour wins. You might remember that Bruce Edwards tragically passed away in 2004 at the age of 49 after developing Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).
There is even a female looper in the Caddie Hall-of-Fame.
Fannie Sunesson was best known for her work on the golf bag for Nick Faldo as he won four major championships during their decade as a team. Fannie would later handle the golf bag for Sweden’s Henrik Stenson and, most recently, has retired from the caddy profession and emerged as a golf instructor.
Since 1930, the Western Golf Association has sponsored a professional caddie training school for interested high school students finishing their freshman year. After completing three summers of learning the ropes from a variety of PGA professionals at several golf clubs, the elite caddie group may receive academic scholarships via the Evans Scholars Foundation. There have been more than 11,000 academic scholarships awarded to financially needy young golf caddies to apply to whatever college major they choose as long as they maintain a 3.3 grade point average.
Though carrying that 50-pound golf bag for six miles in the heat sounds like a very rather grueling job (trust me, it is), the caddy profession has provided many talented golfers a unique opportunity to fulfill their own dream of becoming a vital part of the top levels of professional golf.
After picking up his third Masters win on the bag last weekend, Louisiana native Ted Scott may have a chance to hear his name added into the Caddie Hall-of-Fame sometime in the not-too-distant future, too.