It’s the weekend of the 2023 Masters and while the pundits have inferred that there could be issues between the members of the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi Arabian backed LIV Tour, the weather has been the real issue at the Augusta National Golf Club. There is a certain flavor to Sunday at the Masters and yet it will be a little bit different to see the top pros wearing stocking caps. It would be quite strange to see Tiger Woods with a parka over his traditional Sunday red shirt and black pants. Yet it is an outdoor sport and the best golfers of our era have lots of history in knowing how to handle the vagaries of the weather.
There is a lot of tradition affiliated with the first major championship of the year. At the champions dinner Tuesday six-time Masters titlist Jack Nicklaus was in attendance as well as past Masters’ greats such as Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and Gary Player. Phil Mickelson, the owner of three green jackets, was quietly there as well. While linksters such as Nicklaus and Player no longer tee it up at Augusta National, multiple Masters’ champs such as Mickelson and Bubba Watson return every year as contestants with a lifetime exemption. This will mark the final time that past champions Larry Mize and Sandy Lyle tee it up at the Masters.
Alongside the golfers at the Masters are their caddies who not only carry the bag, give yardages, read putts and help strategize, but also sometimes serve as swing coaches and on-the-spot psychologists. A great caddie can’t hit the ball for the golfer, but they can make a big difference when it comes to saving strokes and calming frayed nerves.
One of those caddies this week at Augusta National is Ted Scott. Looking at his looper resume, Scott has caddied for Bubba Watson when he won his two Masters titles and for the defending champion, Scottie Scheffler. Think about it. A caddie with three Masters wins of his own. Scott caddied for more than a decade for Bubba and sometimes was the brunt of Watson’s outbursts. As Bubba’s game started to go south, Scott took some time off, and then took on the bag of the young Scheffler following his impact week at the 2021 Ryder Cup. Scheffler won four times in 2022, was the PGA Tour’s golfer of the year, and Scheffler-Scott seem to have a solid partnership with long-term ramifications. They initially met one another at the tour’s Bible study group and Scheffler has publicly stated that he appreciates having a Christian caddie. Aside from spending 15 years on Bubba’s bag, Scott also caddied for Paul Azinger and Grant Waite. Scheffler has greatly benefitted from having an old pro on the bag.
J.J. Jakovac was an outstanding junior golfer who played at Vintage High School in Napa and then joined the golf team at Chico State. During his final two years at Chico, Jakovac won the individual title at the NCAA Division II championships. He turned pro, struggled on the mini-tours, and when the chance came about, he took up looping on the PGA Tour. He worked for Ryan Moore who was a top-15 golfer on the PGA Tour. J.J. was on the bag when Moore sank the winning putt for Team USA in the 2016 Ryder Cup Matches. However, Moore’s game started to go south some three years later and he decided to change caddies. Jakovac reached out to some of the agents of college golf’s class of 2019 and became the caddie for recent UC Berkeley grad Collin Morikawa, the 2019 Pac-12 champ.
Two months into their partnership, Morikawa won the Reno-Tahoe Open, a pretty impressive start for a rookie. The following year at San Francisco’s Harding Park, Morikawa hit the shot of the year during final-round play on the 16th hole, made eagle, and won the PGA Championship by two strokes. The following July, the Morikawa-Jakovac team won the 2021 British Open at Royal St. George. Morikawa hasn’t yet won a green jacket, but he’s a top-10 iron player and he has the type of game that goes well at Augusta National.
Paul Tesori is one of the game’s veteran caddies, having looped for Vijay Singh, Sean O’Hair and Jerry Kelly. He spent the greater part of the last 12 years as the caddie for Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open titlist at the Olympic Club. Webb’s game has started to slow down of late and Simpson and Tesori decided to part ways. Tesori immediately picked up the bag of last year’s rookie of the year Cam Young and Young responded positively with a second-place finish in the World Match Play where he won $2.2 million in March. As for any hard feelings between Tesori and Simpson, there don’t seem to be any.
Tesori is still Webb’s swing coach and will be with him next week at Harbour Town to help him with his golf game.
Tim Tucker was the caddie for the uber-difficult Bryson DeChambeau. Bryson was big on practice sessions into the dark and had a diva-type personality. However, they were a successful pair and DeChambeau thanked Tucker publicly for his assistance while winning the 2020 U.S Open. Yet during the summer of 2021, Tucker basically “fired” DeChambeau, walking away from the bag on the Wednesday of tournament week at the Rocket Mortgage Challenge in Detroit. He returned to Oregon’s Bandon Dunes and began an airport-to-golf resort shuttle service. For all intents and purposes, it looked like Tucker had had enough of the professional caddie lifestyle and was looking for quieter days on the Oregon coast.
One of the Bandon Dunes’ caddies is the brother of Kurt Kitayama, a Chico kid who was just starting to make inroads on the PGA Tour. He set up a meeting between his brother and Tucker with the purpose of attempting to get Tucker to work for Kurt. Tucker agreed to return to caddie life and their partnership was close to an immediate success. At the big-money Arnold Palmer Invitational this past March, Kitayama lost his final-round lead with a devastating triple-bogey on the ninth hole. On the long march from the ninth green to the 10th tee, Tucker settled Kitayama down and expressed confidence in his ability to regain the lead. Kitayama made a crucial birdie on the 17th hole, won the Arnold Palmer, and pocketed $3.6 million for his first win on the PGA Tour.
Its Masters weekend at the Augusta National Golf Club and the game’s leading professionals are seeking to win a green jacket as well as the first major championship of the 2023 campaign. Alongside those golfers will be the likes of Tim Tucker, J.J. Jakovic, Paul Tesori and Ted Scott. While none of the aforementioned foursome is exactly a household name to the casual golf fan, they have a long history with the game and have their own major title highlights.
