Carroll Follows Different Dream to Reach Tour

He lives the life of nomad, traveling on a tight budget from one PGA Tour event to the next, hoping to make the cut. Already this year he’s been at Scottsdale, Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines.

Next stop: Valencia.

But Kevin Carroll, 25, isn’t the golfer you’ve never heard of. He doesn’t even dream the dream. He doesn’t wonder what it would be like to don the green jacket or be selected to the Ryder Cup team. He doesn’t imagine himself facing Tiger or Colin or Justin or Ernie in a playoff at St. Andrews.

No, Carroll has a different kind of dream, a different kind of role model. He might put it this way:

“I am Fluff Cowan.”

Except he doesn’t. For just as Kobe Bryant would rather be the first Kobe and not “the next Michael,” Kevin Carroll knows that no one could really fill the shoes of Fluff Cowan, perhaps the only caddie you’ve ever heard of, the walrus-mustachioed aide de camp of Tiger Woods.

No, Kevin Carroll, though yet to realize his dream, seems to like being Kevin Carroll--poet, nature lover, Phish fan, free spirit, aspiring caddie.

And so this young man whose father manages the Chequessett Country Club on Cape Cod haunts the tour, volunteering to caddie in the pro-ams and celebrity events, drinking suds and striking up conversations, hoping to hit it off with a pro in need. And that’s what he’ll be doing among a throng of volunteer caddies helping out at the Nissan Open this week.

These volunteers include many high school and college golfers, as well as a contingent of airmen from Edwards Air Force Base. They’ll do little more than be beast of burden and, if possible, offer a little insight into the do’s and don’ts at Valencia. Pros rely much more heavily on caddies for strategy, club selection, the read of yardage and greens, and moral support.

“They’re almost like sports psychologists out there,” says David Richardson, a former teaching pro who is serving as caddie master as a volunteer for the Greater Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce.

And that is how Kevin Carroll envisions his future. Odd that perhaps the tourney’s most free-spirited volunteer might also be the one with the most serious purpose. Then again, maybe it’s not so odd, since there’s nothing conventional about caddying as a trade.

“Well, I was not born to do the 9 to 5 work our society demands,” Carroll explains. “And I love nature. And I love golf. I think of it as a physical game of chess. And since I love to--and I know I’ll probably never be good enough to compete--I’d like to be in the company of people who really do make it special . . .

“There’s something very special and genuine between a player and a caddie.”

Meanwhile, there’s networking to do.

Carroll says he often chats with tour caddies. “I hope to polish up my caddying skills. They introduce me to different people and different ideas on how to professionally become a caddie.

“They say, ‘Stay hungry and do what you’re doing.’ . . . You’ve really got to stick around every tournament, every week. It’s a really difficult industry to break in to. . . . If this was basketball, I’d be a gym rat. I don’t know what you call around a golf course.”

It is, perhaps, hard to imagine a young college graduate with a degree in literature choosing this particular vocational path. Often tour caddies are excellent golfers themselves who harbored dreams of tour championships before recognizing their own limitations. Then they figured that the tour life, with a standard 10% cut of a player’s winnings, isn’t such a bad life at that.

Back when he was better known as Mike Cowan, back before he grew his trademark mustache, Fluff was a star college player and an assistant pro who played to a two handicap. Boning up for one tournament last year, Fluff shot a 71 while Tiger, in a pro-am, came in at 74.

Kevin Carroll’s sport at Lynchburg College wasn’t golf, but soccer. He admits to a 12 handicap but adds, “I could be a lot better if I got to practice more.”

Carroll preferred to see the world, spending 1 1/2 years in Australia and touring Europe. For months he followed a Grateful Dead tour and boasts that he has seen 97 performance of Phish, a Burlington, Vt. group that, as Carroll puts it, is sort of New England’s answer to the Dead. Phish, Carroll says, is “very bohemian.” (In case you are wondering, the band is no relation to Country Joe and the Fish of Woodstock fame.)

Carroll sees himself as a bohemian and is proud of it. Golf and the PGA has long had a reputation for elitism, stuffiness and less-than-progressive attitudes. But there seems to be more tolerance for caddies, some of whom have gypsy lifestyles.

Fluff Cowan himself, Carroll points out, is “a major Deadhead.” Carroll says the only time he met Fluff, he asked him about the Dead.

But even Fluff can’t get away with tie-dyes on the course. And Carroll says he too has made some concessions as to his physical appearance. So the hair that used to hang past his shoulders has been cut to a more conventional length.

As Carroll put it, “I can’t be that philosophically happy as to put the hair issue behind my career.”

And the beard, once full and bushy, is now a goatee, a la Paul Stankowski and David Duval.

Alas, they already have caddies. But someday, somewhere, Carroll figures, he will be recognized as just the kind of pack animal-cum-shaman some pro is looking for.

Kevin Carroll dreams of that day and the moments when, with just a smile, he’ll steady his pro’s nerves and give him the confidence to sink the winning putt.

And if not on the PGA, Carroll figures, maybe the LPGA.

“I don’t want to be sexist,” he says.