The caddie for Garrick Higgo blames himself after the pro was penalized two strokes for arriving late last week to his PGA Championship first-round tee time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Austin Gaugert posted his thoughts to Instagram on Wednesday. On Monday, Golfweek\u2019s Adam Schupak reported<\/a> that Gaugert and Higgo parted ways after the PGA, and at this week\u2019s CJ Cup Byron Nelson<\/a> event, Higgo is using Nick Cavendish-Pell as his caddie.\u00a0<\/p>\n Below is Gaugert\u2019s statement:<\/p>\n \u201cI want to say something about the incident with Garrick Higgo being late to the tee on Thursday at the PGA Championship. As a caddie, you try to do everything you can to prepare your player for competition and I fell short of that. Garrick was understanding throughout the situation and handled it with professionalism and class. This has happened to players before and will again. Garrick handled a difficult situation with grace, and I wish him nothing but success moving forward.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter working with Garrick and finding the highest success in caddying, Garrick has become a better friend to me than just a boss. I will always be grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Higgo\u2019s late-arrival penalty<\/a> came during last Thursday\u2019s first round of the PGA. He\u2019d been scheduled to tee off at 7:18 a.m. ET and arrived at 7:19, leading to the addition of two strokes to his first-hole score, per rule 5.3a<\/a> of the Rules of Golf. Had Higgo arrived more than five minutes late, he would have been disqualified.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time of the tee time, Higgo was on the nearby practice green, and as Higgo made his way to the tee, Gaugert was seen imploring him to arrive. When Higgo did, he was told of the penalty by a rules official, then went on to shoot a one-under 69. The next day, Higgo shot a 76 and missed the cut by a shot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n After his first round, Higgo answered 15 questions on what had happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you know me, then you know I am very casual and laid back,\u201d Higgo said in his press conference. \u201cBut \u2014 I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t want to be there 10 minutes early. I know that five minutes is fine. I thought I had time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was obviously too casual, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The caddie for Garrick Higgo blames himself after the pro was penalized two strokes for arriving late last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-660177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}