Klein Shoulders Caddie Difficulties

Want to see Emilee Klein cringe?

Ask her about caddies.

It’s not that she doesn’t like caddies. She plans to marry one, as a matter of fact.

But Klein, a Studio City native who will return to Southern California to play in the LPGA Tour’s Los Angeles Women’s Championship at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale this week, has had her share of problems with bag carriers in the last year.

She went through four or five in 1997--not counting the few times her father and brother filled in--hiring and firing them sometimes after just a week or two.

Less than two weeks before the Los Angeles tournament, she still didn’t know who would be on her bag.

“It’s really hard to find someone you mesh with,” Klein said. “I’m just going to keep taking someone and do my own work until I can find someone I trust. There are only about 10 really good caddies on tour and they’re all taken.”

Klein shouldn’t need a caddie to advise her about Oakmont, where her parents are members and she played countless times growing up.

But after Oakmont, Klein’s caddie door will begin revolving the way it has been since caddie-turned-fiance Kenny Harms was hired by Senior PGA Tour player Hubert Green following Klein’s breakthrough year in 1996.

She doesn’t want to even try to remember the number of caddies she has gone through.

Her reasons for showing them the door were plentiful. They showed up late to the golf course, gave her the wrong yardage or clashed with her personality.

“It’s not that difficult to be a caddie on tour,” said Harms, a caddie for four years. “Basically you just have to be on time and not be hung over. The biggest thing is your personalities have got to match. Emilee has had a hard time finding that because she’s the type of person that demands certain things of her caddie.”

Klein thought she had seen it all with caddies, but she had no idea what was about to transpire when she approached the seventh hole at Wykagl Country Club in New Rochelle, N.Y., during the LPGA Tour’s Big Apple Classic last July.

The seventh hole at Wykagl is a 215-yard par-three, the longest par-three on the LPGA Tour. As usual, there was a delay. Klein’s group had to wait 45 minutes on the tee. When it was time for her to tee off, Klein called for her club.

She got no response.

She looked around the tee box and spotted her bag. She lowered her eyes and saw her caddie resting against a fence--sound asleep.

“I had to scream at him for him to hear me,” Klein said. “I was so mad. It’s pretty funny to think about it now, but at the time it wasn’t too funny. I’m playing an LPGA event and my caddie fell asleep.”

That was it for him. But he was already in the doghouse anyway.

A week earlier, in the first round of the U.S. Open, he gave her the wrong yardage to lay up over a hazard on the par-five 18th hole.

“He gave me 147 to carry the hazard and 160 to the fairway,” Klein said. “So I pulled a seven-wood and it landed smack in the middle of the hazard. Then he tells me he said it was 177 to carry the hazard, but I must be the stupidest person in the world if I think I’m going to hit my seven wood 177 yards.”

With Harms on her bag, Klein became a force on the tour in 1996. She won the Ping Welch’s Championship and the Weetabix Women’s British Open on consecutive weeks and finished second in the ITT LPGA Tour Championship. She had eight top-10 finishes and recorded a career-best scoring average of 71.79. Her $463,793 in earnings ranked her ninth on the yearly money list.

With Harms working for Green in 1997, Klein wasn’t nearly as successful.

Only four top-10 finishes. Her scoring average jumped nearly a stroke to 72.51. Her earnings were cut in half to $208,865 and she finished a disappointing 36th on the money list, failing to qualify for the season-ending Tour championship for the top-30 money winners.

Pat Azarizi, a friend who was caddie for Klein late last year, will resume those duties late in April when he finishes the semester at Stetson College. Until then, Klein will choose her caddies on a week-to-week basis.

Harms will caddie for Klein when he has time off from the Senior Tour. They expect to be together for about seven or eight events this year, including the Nabisco Dinah Shore Classic in Rancho Mirage on March 26-29.

“When Kenny is with me everything is so easy,” Klein said. “He’s truly the best at what he does. He knows the courses and is able to judge everything well.

“I guess I just expect everyone to work like he does.”

Klein and Harms, who live together in Florida and expect to be married next January, didn’t always get along.

“When they first worked together, they couldn’t stand each other,” said Bobby Klein, Emilee’s father. “After their first tournament, she was telling me, ‘I want to get rid of him, I want to fire him right now.’ But I just told her to give it another week, and as time went on they actually did well together.”

Klein says caddie problems weren’t the only thing that affected her play last year. Scheduling didn’t go smoothly.

When Azarizi took over bag-carrying duties late in July, Klein began playing well. She had consecutive top-10 finishes at the du Maurier Classic and Friendly’s Classic. Then the travel started.

On the brink of entering the top 30 in earnings, Klein played in England, Korea and twice in Japan in 2 1/2 months. Two of those events are unofficial events that didn’t count on the LPGA money list.

“Everyone wanted me to be someplace,” she said. “They put these appearance fees in front of you that are hard to pass up, but you are actually losing money sometimes because you don’t know if that’s the week you are going to win [an official tour event].

“I missed two tournaments that could have been important to getting in the top 30, then I’m forced to play the week I get back and I’m tired and miss the cut.”

Klein, who in a few weeks will move into a bigger house down the street from her place in Lake Nona, Fla., intends to unveil a new attitude on tour in an attempt to regain her 1996 form.

“I’m going out there to win every time out,” she said. “I want to be in contention every week and finish in the top 10 on the money list.

“It’s not really a new attitude, I was just distracted a little last year. I actually feel I played better last year than the year before. It was a disappointing year because I expected more. I put so much pressure on myself that I didn’t get good results because of it.”

Harms said with Klein’s caddie fiasco apparently resolved, she should have no trouble climbing back to the top.

“That bothered her a lot last year,” he said. “But I think she realizes now that she was worried over nothing. “It doesn’t really matter who’s caddying for her. She’s one of the best players out there.”