'I can't believe you're caddying," Stephen Ames said to me the other day at the Glen Abbey Golf Club, where the Bell Canadian Open will begin tomorrow. "Are you caddying the whole week?"
"I definitely plan to caddy the whole week, including the weekend," I fired back.
Ames returned the volley. "Maybe you'll be there if you give him the right yardages."
The him is Richard Zokol, who will tee off tomorrow at 12:25 p.m. in the first round of his only tournament this year. I'll be carrying his clubs. I haven't caddied on the PGA Tour since 1982, when I looped for Jim Nelford. I worked a few tournaments a year in those days.
Nelford shot 65 in the final round of the Walt Disney tournament in Orlando in the fall of that year. I'd met Nelford when we played a practice round together for the 1977 British Amateur at the Ganton Golf Club in Scarborough, England. Nelford had won the 1975 and 1976 Canadian Amateur title.
He was some kind of golfer. Nelford will be working the Canadian Open telecast this weekend. He's a smoothie on the air, not afraid to say what he believes.
My caddying days ended after the Disney tournament. But I was chatting with Zokol a month ago and offered to caddy for him. So now I'm carrying a bag that must weigh close to 50 pounds. We're probably the only golfer-caddy pair whose ages total more than 100 years.
I feel as if I'm in pretty good shape, and it was no problem to carry the bag the last couple of days. I walk and carry my clubs when I play, so my legs are strong. My neck and shoulder muscles take a bit of a beating, but, hey, that's to be expected, right?
We'll see what happens. Zokol's a busy guy these days, but away from the PGA Tour. He's the founder of the new Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club, which is still in development, in the Nicola Valley in British Columbia. Zokol and his co-architect, Rod Whitman, have come up with a stunning design. Whitman designed Wolf Creek in Ponoka, Alta. He does excellent, low-profile work and deserves more attention than he gets.
Zokol is also the national spokesman for the Canadian Junior Golf Association. He plans to play this Canadian Open and next year's, and that will be it for tournament golf until 2006. He'll be 48 then and will start to prepare for the Champions Tour, which he hopes to play when he turns 50.
I like the vibes around my caddying this week for Zokol. I'm in the 25th year of writing this column. It started when I caddied for Nelford in the 1980 Canadian Open at the Royal Montreal Golf Club. I wrote Globe and Mail columns called A Caddy's View. Nelford shot 68-70 in the first two rounds and played with Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino in the third round.
But Nelford, then 24, wasn't confident in his swing and shot 78-74 on the weekend. He was on his way to a successful PGA Tour career when a serious water-skiing accident in 1985 stopped him. Nelford can still play pretty good golf, though, and hopes to make it to the Champions Tour. It would be a wonderful story if he does.
Zokol and I are close friends and work together on the TSN show Acura World of Golf. He loves to help kids in golf. We played nine holes yesterday with Darren Wallace, the 15-year-old Canadian Amateur champion, Craig Doell, a fine 32-year-old amateur who works as a financial adviser in Victoria, and James Lepp from Abbotsford, B.C. Lepp is one of Canada's most promising college amateurs and has already won a Canadian Tour event.
Zokol will play tomorrow with Grant Waite, who finished second to Tiger Woods in the 2000 Canadian Open at Glen Abbey, and Scott Simpson, the 1987 U.S. Open champion. Zokol's been working hard. His swing is solid. His body has its aches and pains, so we'll see how he stands up to the rigours of tournament golf again.
I'm sure people will continue to kid me about how I'm holding up, whether I might need oxygen and whether an alternate caddy should wait in the wings. My colleague Bob Weeks was good-naturedly talking up the idea of an over-under on how long I'd last on his show Fairways on The Fan 590 in Toronto. But I feel ready to go and to continue.
It's hard to believe 22 years have passed since I caddied for Nelford in that Disney tournament. I'm glad to be back on the bag, right there to hear the golf talk live and to see top-notch golf from inside the ropes. Caddying was a rush way back when, and it's a rush now.