“I don’t have a return flight home scheduled.”
“If we top 10 then we play in the desert.”
“She’s hitting it great and I’m optimistic.”
So the week began.
During this past week’s LPGA tournament at La Costa I got a first hand look at the mindset and preparation that is part of golf at its highest level when I hosted professional caddie, John Bouker for tournament week. John has recently become the full time caddie for LPGA member, Liz Janangelo and the KIA Classic marked their first LPGA tournament of the 2010 season.
Janangelo is a promising twenty-something who has had a stellar collegiate career (All American at Duke) and is a proven winner on the Duramed Futures Tour having won 3 tournaments at what amounts to the #1 proving ground for aspiring LPGA players.
That’s an impressive resume, but as I pointed out a few weeks ago the Tour’s limited schedule makes each event ultra-important and she and Bouker needed a top-10 finish (out of a field of over 150) just to be able to play in the LPGA’s first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship in the desert this coming weekend.
For his part, Bouker has caddied for a variety of players on multiple tours and was with Liz last fall when she needed to birdie the final hole of Q School to avoid a playoff in order to get her Card.
(Janangelo is considered to have full-time status on the LPGA Tour but that does not mean she gets into every event including the Tour’s majors and many of the internationally played events. I know, I’m confused too.)
Entering the week I hadn’t met either Bouker or Janangelo, but I had connections to both. Bouker is based out of a club in Florida where a good friend of mine is on their professional staff and Janangelo is a long time acquaintance of a buddy of mine who I have worked with for years here in SoCal.
I didn’t know them, they didn’t know the area and I was curious to see how a full week of “inside the rope” access looked during tournament week…
Monday – While Janangelo took advantage of having Titleist’s Performance Institute nearby by to have her wedges dialed in in the morning, Bouker went to LaCosta and got a first look at the course marking out yardages while paying particular attention to what might play to Liz’s strengths/weaknesses.
They meet in the afternoon to play nine, with John noting afterward that “she is hitting it so pure I can’t wait for Thursday to get here!”
Tuesday – They meet at the course at 9:00 AM, and for the first time they play the full tournament 18. (LaCosta has 36 holes on the complex, with the LPGA tournament following the lead of the old PGA Tour format of playing 9 holes from each of the two courses)
Bouker notes that Liz’s ball striking is still phenomenal saying, “There was no question that she had the most control in her group today -which included LPGA veteran Laura Diaz- I can’t wait for Thursday!”
Wednesday – Only a practice day (Bouker refers to it as “watching divots”) as the LPGA holds its Pro-am that day. Janangelo’s status as a fledgling tour member means that there is not enough Pro-am groups for her to participate. When she does reach the point where she gets high enough on the points/money list, Janangelo’s outgoing personality will make her a memorable (read: great!) Pro-am partner. When I mentioned this to her later in the week, she nodded in agreement but added, “I always need to watch my language.” Well then.
Liz is continuing to stripe it at the range, and after a couple of hours practice she ends the session remarking to Bouker “Why should I continue to hit balls, I’m ready.” Have I mentioned that her caddie is ready for Thursday too?
Thursday – Janangelo’s tee time is one of the last of the day (1:35PM) leaving Bouker with a full morning of passing time before the round. He tells me that he went to the beach, something he did quite often during the week. Actually, he spent all of his down time during daylight hours going to the beach telling me that he had to take advantage of the beautiful weather. Coming from a guy who resides in South Florida, I think this is a strong testament of how nice our weather is here.
Liz’s round doesn’t go so well (5 over, 77) and it appears to be tougher on caddie than player. Bouker isn’t much for chatting after the round and heads straight home, while a few of us have dinner with Liz and her Mom. Liz takes the attitude that the greens fooled her more often than not and that if one of her birdie putts had fallen early, the entire tone of the round would have been different. File this under: “Professional Golfers, they’re just like us.”
John for his part is nowhere to be found.
Friday – As is standard, a late Thursday time means an early Friday tee time (8:00AM) and as my friends and I drive to the course at 10:00AM I was thinking of what Liz had said the night before guesstimating that the cut would be about +3 (the number ended up being +5) so a round of at least two under was needed. When we reached her at the turn she was 9 over for the event and missing the cut was inevitable. Liz finally got her birdie on #10 and stayed upbeat the whole time.
John seemed to be in better spirits but noted afterward that staying positive when you know you are missing the cut is probably the toughest part of his job..
From here Liz goes back east and works on her game and to augment the light LPGA schedule, she plans on taking advantage of the fact that she can play 3 Futures’ tour events. At the moment, she is considering playing at a Futures event in Houston in mid-April before her next LPGA event in Mexico. Her resume says that her time will come, and being young and marketable -she’s got a healthy dose of sponsors- she is not anywhere near panic mode.
For John, a week with a missed cut does mean a paid week -though not a handsomely paid one- and the fact that there will be no work with Janangelo for a few weeks means time back “looping” at his club in Florida.
Talking with Bouker after the round, he remained optimistic based on Liz’s game -despite her score- but with so few events to play in this year he was leery of the year to come.
“She was hitting it soooo good leading up to the tournament, and I don’t know what happened. Now its another month before we get out there.”
His tone was a mix of what I would call grimly optimistic.
The life of a tour caddie.
Greg
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