Brian’s lessons from caddy days
Yesterday, Monday July 9th, we held our annual event to honor our Caddy Master. His name is Jim Tanner and he was inducted into the Caddy Hall of Fame about 5 years ago. He has worked at Pawtucket CC for 60 years, and has done a tremendous amount of work for golf, what it stands for and most of all me.
I remember being a young kid and he would assign each loop for the caddies. He always lined me up with “big” tippers, $10 for each bag and sometimes $5 for the other guys in the cart.
He taught me exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Most of all he said that god gave you two ears and two eyes and one mouth for a reason. Listen and look twice as much as you would speak. Those words still stick with me, and JT is the greatest.
Now for my round. It was a shotgun start and we started on the 10th hole. A 439 par 4. Hit a good drive, left side of fairway. I had 168 to the pin with a breeze behind. I hit a 9 iron to about 4 feet below the hole and thought, boy that was a good shot, but I thought it hit and ran through the green. My other 3 playing partners were all over the place on the hole and I thought to myself, I better be able to get up and down to save par. We looked and looked for my ball and couldn’t find it. JT was on an adjacent hole and was clapping. I wasn’t sure why, then he yelled over, take a look in the hole. Low and behold, I holed out for eagle to start my round. I guess it was JT that brought me the luck. Ended up with a 67, one off my career round and came in 1st place.
I guess my point of this was was to honor JT for all he’s done.