{"id":575551,"date":"2026-05-09T23:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/575551\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T23:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:52:10","slug":"one-thing-liv-golf-got-right-it-didnt-treat-caddies-like-rats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/575551\/","title":{"rendered":"One thing LIV Golf got right? It didn\u2019t treat caddies like \u2018rats\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

I rang an old acquaintance late on Thursday night, though it was early evening for him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are you right now,\u201d I ask.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sipping a beer on the terrace of the Players and Caddies Lounge at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not talking Virginia, County Cavan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA nice evening?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat. Had lobster and a tomahawk steak for dinner. The lobster was a bit salty but still nice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd of course, you didn\u2019t have to pay?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, no. Absolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Louis Oosthuizen hands his putter to Byrne during a LIV tournament at The Oaks in Bolton, MassachusettsPatrick Smith\/LIV Golf via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Colin Byrne is my acquaintance. He\u2019s a caddie, now well into the back nine of a career that stretches back to 1983. Then it was a summer job to help him through university. In \u201986 he was on David Feherty\u2019s bag when the Northern Irish player won the Scottish Open. I\u2019ve heard of one other man who caddied for a Northern Irish golfer (Ronan Rafferty) to help finance his university years. That was Doug King. He is now the owner of the soon-to-be Premier League football club, Coventry City. <\/p>\n

Byrne had spells with Retief Goosen, Alex Noren, Edoardo Molinari, Ernie Els, Paul Lawrie, Rafa Cabrera-Bello and, most recently, Louis Oosthuizen. Like every frontline caddie, most of Byrne\u2019s stories are untold. Caddies, he says, can\u2019t afford to burn bridges.<\/p>\n

His great moment came in the 2004 US Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island where he was on the bag when the South African Goosen won his second major. For the caddie it was his first and only. There were tough times too, mostly in the early years, when the challenge was to make enough money to get to the next tournament. He hitch-hiked, travelled on inexpensive overnight buses and became expert at finding one-star pensiones. His parents wondered why he\u2019d ever gone to Trinity College, Dublin, and got a good degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tRick Broadbent on the fall of LIV Golf\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Els hired Byrne because he needed someone calm. Cayce Kerr, who\u2019d caddied for Ernie, described him as two bears wrapped in one: a teddy and a grizzly. Once at Arnold Palmer\u2019s tournament in Florida, Byrne got the grizzly, verbal abuse so bad that by the 15th hole, he\u2019d had enough. He walked in, leaving the player to carry his own clubs. \u201cWe all have a line, and Ernie happened to cross it on that occasion,\u201d Byrne would later explain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rift soon healed. \u201cYou know, given the nature of the caddie\/player relationship, it\u2019s important that you don\u2019t spend too much time with each other. With Retief, when we played Bay Hill, he\u2019d invite me to stay at his home in Orlando. I\u2019d say, I don\u2019t want to be offensive but you see me all day on the golf course. And you don\u2019t want to see me again when you go home at night. I mostly managed to avoid it.<\/p>\n

\u201cErnie loved me staying at his place because we\u2019d play tennis at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWere you able to give him a game?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cErnie\u2019s a good tennis player. All these guys are so good at everything. I mean, we had a good time. Yeah we did.\u00a0I\u2019d say he was generally winning comfortably. On a rare occasion, I\u2019d give him a game.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, Oosthuizen asked Byrne if he would job-share with his regular caddie Wynand Stander. In his mid-fifties, a job-share was what Byrne\u2019s body ached for. That first year with Oosthuizen, Byrne was on the bag when the South African was runner-up to Jon Rahm at the US Open, and then at the Open Championship at Royal St George\u2019s, where they were in a tie for third behind Collin Morikawa. In May 2022, a month before LIV Golf\u2019s inaugural tournament at the Centurion Club in Hertfordshire, Oosthuizen joined the new tour and Byrne\u2019s life changed. <\/p>\n

\"TheByrne, during a topsy-turvy relationship with Els, says that he once walked off the course at the 15th in response to verbal abuse from the South AfricanJamie Squire\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

With business-class flights, paid-for car rental, excellent hotels and free bars, caddies have been treated differently on LIV. They have access to the clubhouse and the locker room, and the players\u2019 dining area became the players\u2019 and caddies\u2019 dining area. More important was the huge prize money, and knowing that no matter how your player performed, you couldn\u2019t lose money as even the last-placed finisher was guaranteed $120,000 (\u00a388,000).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe caddies love it,\u201d the veteran caddie Billy Foster says. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t you? The LIV Tour has obviously been designed by the\u00a0Caddies Association\u00a0because everything is paid for. As a caddie [on the PGA Tour], if your player misses the cut you lose money because you pay your own expenses.<\/p>\n

\"AerialThe 100-acre estate in North Carolina that Rahm\u2019s caddie Hayes has put on the market for \u00a310.26million <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve worked all week, miss the cut so you get nought.\u00a0Then flip it to the LIV Tour, where your flights are paid for, your hotels are paid for, you eat with the players and you\u2019re not treated like a rat tied up outside the clubhouse, which I\u2019ve had for most of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Byrne says that when he started out, things weren\u2019t bad on the European Tour but the US was a different story. \u201cIn Europe, you were always let in the locker room, allowed in the clubhouse,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember being shocked when I came over to the States for the first time. We were in some grubby old tent or waiting under a tree to be picked up by our master coming out of the luxurious clubhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a bit shocked. It was horrible. You know, those horrible stink bins for toilets, no running water That\u2019s how it used to be. But it was like anything, people get used to being treated like that. Over the years, as our status was elevated our circumstances got a little bit better. I always felt that was driven by, \u2018What\u2019s the least we can do to appease them,\u2019 as opposed to really wanting to make things better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After becoming part of LIV in 2022, Byrne felt for the first time in his working life that the caddie was no longer a second-class citizen. \u201cA lot of it came from Greg Norman. Everyone has their opinions [about Norman, the former LIV chief executive]. He was certainly a divisive character. He was a tough person to be around on the golf course and particularly tough on his caddies. But off the course, he really looked after them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ChaseChase Koepka, brother of Brooks, celebrates a hole in one at the 12th of an LIV event in Adelaide in 2023 Mark Brake\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember talking to Tony Navarro, who worked for him for many years, and Bruce Edwards. They\u2019d have the big watches, nice cars and in a quiet way, they\u2019d allude to the fact that it all came from Greg. Their message was, \u2018Yeah, we take a lot of shit but he looks after us.\u2019\u200a\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Byrne and his fellow caddies aren\u2019t looking for sympathy. How could they when one of their brethren, Rahm\u2019s looper Adam Hayes, has just put his 100-acre North Carolina estate on the market for $14million (about \u00a310.25million). Still, before LIV, Byrne would spend 32 weeks on the road, making his way to far-flung venues for weeks that lasted eight or nine days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it does for every caddie, the travelling and the weight of the golf bag took their toll. Then LIV came along, and, sharing Oosthuizen\u2019s bag with Stander, Byrne\u2019s schedule was down to ten tournaments a year. He did two full seasons on LIV with Oosthuizen and in each of those, he earned more than he\u2019d ever done on the PGA Tour. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember saying to myself quite a few times, \u2018I just hope this lasts another year.\u2019 At my stage it was just idyllic,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was the perfect way to start looking forward to retirement as opposed to keeping on the treadmill. It means I no longer have as much concern about the future as I would have had. It\u2019s transformed so many caddies\u2019 lives; their earning ability, their quality of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, this has been a revelation, the best thing that could have happened and I think every caddie out here will tell you that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an ill wind that doesn\u2019t blow some good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I rang an old acquaintance late on Thursday night, though it was early evening for him.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhere are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-575551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}