Despite initial scepticism, Gary Moran finds Rick Reilly'sWho's Your Caddy? a great read
When the sports editor suggested the inclusion of Rick Reilly's recently published Who's Your Caddy? in this series I was a little wary. What I knew of Reilly was that he sometimes covers golf and is reputed to be among the best sportswriters in America with an acclaimed weekly column in Sports Illustrated.
On the downside the single piece of his work lodged in my mind was a jingoistic load of nonsense written after the last Ryder Cup in which he described Phillip Price as a "grey-haired Welsh nobody". Phil Mickeslon, argued Reilly, would find a way to overcome his loss to Price "as he climbed into his jet with his drop-dead gorgeous wife to go back to one of his three US mansions".
Silly me thinking the Ryder Cup was about winning golf matches and not trophy brides or real estate.
Fortunately I took the editor's hint and didn't blackball Reilly for that one piece. It would have been a shame to miss out on Who's Your Caddy? in which he writes irresistibly about carrying the bag of some of the "great, near great and reprobates" of golf.
In fact, caddying doesn't have that much to do with it other than providing a way for Reilly to spend time with the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Casey Martin and David Duval. There is a chapter for each of his "employers" and every one is worth reading.
Most compelling is the section on John Daly who opens up to Reilly on a road trip and is painfully honest about his various addictions which at any one time include some or all of drinking, smoking, gambling, chocolate, diet coke, anti-depressants, hitting golf balls a very long way and marriage.
Within six weeks of Reilly caddying for Daly in a pro-am, the Wild Thing had met and then married his fourth wife who already had a two-year-old son. With a swing and a life "way past parallel", Reilly terms Daly "everybody's favourite train-wreck".
Daly's extremes are matched if not exceeded by Donald Trump who takes Reilly around his own Trump National in New York. Trump is obscenely rich, brash and ostentatious. Everything in his world from Viagra Falls at the back of the 17th green (100 feet high, 5,000 gallons a minute, cost $7m) to the cheeseburgers ("we brought in the best cheeseburger chef on the Eastern seaboard") has to be the "greatest", the "biggest", the "richest", the "nicest", the "farthest", the "most expensive", "most beautiful" and "absolute top of the A-list, Baby".
Reilly neatly dubs him "mayor of Superlative City". In his real working life, Reilly likes to visit the caddyshack to get the lowdown on certain players and at the end of each of the 12 chapters he gives a humourous translation of some caddyspeak.
For example, "Damn, I'm hot for Keep On's bag. Kid just nuts it. I mean he really torches his lumber" equates to "Honestly, I would love to caddy for young tour pro Ty Tryon. He hits the ball a very long way with his driver."
Not wanting either the sports editor or Reilly to think that they are beyond improvement, I must point out that there are a couple of inaccurate statistics and a sprinkling of hackneyed one-liners but what would a caddy or a caddying book be without a few rough edges?
Also, Price is the current European Open champion which means that he has one significant title more than Mickelson unless you count "best player never to have won a major".
Let bygones be bygones. Who's Your Caddy? is a great read.
Trumpalicious.
