Open Rookie Shows Up With a Lot of Baggage

Amazing, the stuff you can find on EBay. David Diaz’s latest acquisition followed him around the Old Course during his British Open debut Thursday the way the sniffles follow a child.

Once, it nearly dropped his golf bag. Another time, unsure where to put a head cover, it simply stuck it in its mouth.

Several times, it stepped in front of his putts. Then there was the time its weathered cap blew off while it was trying to balance that darned bag.

Amazing, the things you can find on EBay.

But should a caddie really be one of them?

Diaz shot a two-over-par 74 with a caddie who wasn’t a caddie, but an investment banker who had won an Internet auction.

Diaz’s regular caddie in Australia didn’t have a passport, so Diaz put the spot up for bid, with London businessman Stephen Bridle paying the U.S. equivalent of about $15,000 to carry the bag.

This, even though Diaz was making his first appearance at St. Andrews and first appearance in any sort of major.

And this, even though Bridle, at age 43, had never once caddied.

“I’ve seen a lot of things in my time,” said Rick MacKenzie, St. Andrews’ veteran caddie master. “But this is a strange one.”

Such is the beauty of the British Open, where you can never ignore the forest for the Woods, where every great round is garnished by a goofy one.

While Tiger Woods was schooling the world Thursday, Diaz’s bespectacled caddie was struggling to offer one piece of cogent advice.

“I told him to putt harder,” Bridle said.

When Woods was leaving much of the field in the mist, Diaz’s caddie was leaving him in the bathroom, walking far ahead while his golfer followed later, strolling down the 17th fairway strangely alone.

“Yeah, he was bursting,” Bridle said. “But we were on the clock.”

A strange one, indeed, when one considers that caddies are such an important part of figuring out this historic course, books have been written about them.

“Caddies are overrated,” Diaz said, shrugging. “They’re going to hate me for saying it, but it’s true.”

So several weeks ago, this chunky 37-year-old journeyman golfer who once went a decade without a win decided not to sweat the loss of his regular guy.

He placed an EBay ad that began, “Lifetime opportunity to caddie at the Open ...”

An Australian man had the winning bid, but then dropped out, leaving room for Bridle, who matched it.

The banker received the phone call at his office last Friday.

“All my buddies are shouting, ‘Take it, take it!’ ” he recalled. “So I guess I had to take it.”

First, Bridle had to write the check, which Diaz did not donate to charity as some expected. Instead, he used for his traveling expenses.

“Charity begins at home, mate,” he said.

Then, Bridle had to learn the craft. And he had only two practice rounds to do it.

“He walked in here in shock, with his hands up, asking for help,” said MacKenzie.

In the small caddies’ room alongside the first fairway, MacKenzie gave Bridle a one-hour crash course.

“I told him the basic rule of the caddie is, you’ve got to get up, sober up, show up, put up and shut up,” MacKenzie said. “He said he was going to have a problem with sobering up, because he was drunk on the atmosphere.”

MacKenzie taught him the 14-club rule, the check-the-umbrella rule, the keep-the-towel-wet rule.

He taught him to make sure every ball was marked and numbered, and make sure there were extra gloves and tees, and never, ever run on the course.

“After a while he was like, ‘Geez, what have I gotten myself into?’ ” MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie said the St. Andrews caddies had no problem with Bridle because he asked for help.

It’s Diaz who bothers them.

“We support the caddie, not the golfer, who could really be setting a bad precedent,” MacKenzie said. “What if this becomes a regular thing? I can see it now, golfers walking behind the tee box with raffle tickets, saying, “OK, No. 345, come take my bag!’ ”

Diaz smiled and shrugged again.

“I always do my own yardage; so do lots of pros,” he said. “As a golfer, you are in charge of yourself out there. A caddie can only help so much.”

Late in their round Thursday, the distance between Diaz and his EBay acquisition was as wide as Hell bunker.

Diaz would be looking forward studying his chart, Bridle would be looking at the ground.

Diaz would hit left, Bridle would look for the ball right.

While the other caddies would walk with their golfers, Bridle, dressed in jogging shoes, would sometimes walk and chat with officials.

Even at the end of this oddest of days, Diaz walked one direction while Bridle, scolded by officials to take care of the clubs, walked another.

Said Bridle: “It gave me a lifetime of memories.”

Said Diaz: “It saved me the cost of a caddie.”