Caddie's trick bag should include being nanny, porter, driver, shrink

Some relationships last for 20 years; others have lasted for less than a week . However long a player/caddie partnership exists, the chances are it will be shorter rather than longer.Caddie's role

Peter Coleman parted company last year, after over two decades, with one of the most intense golfers of the modern era, the detailed and diligent German Bernhard Langer. What made them stay together was a mutual respect and, of course, success.

Mac O'Grady was reputed to have fired a caddie while his approach shot was in mid-flight. He had been known to go through as many as four caddies a week.

Such was his reputation that he had reserve caddies lined up most weeks he played. Being fired from Mac was more likely than staying employed.

Dave Musgrove endured one of the most demanding tasks in caddying, by stretching out his tenure with Seve Ballesteros in his uncompromising prime to four years back in the early 1980s. Dave lasted 10 weeks with Mac O'Grady, which was the record at that time. What I am saying is that we are living on borrowed time as porters for the fickle beings that unfortunately we cannot do without. The dream employers like, say, Nick Price or Retief Goosen, reasonable and rational people, are far and few between.

A common question we get asked as bagmen (after how much do you earn) is, "How long does your contract last for?" To which the reply is, "What contract?" We are still pretty much living day by day, week by week. I am certainly not aware of any caddie having a contract with a player other than "See you next week".

Such is the nature of the player/caddie relationship. If there are problems then it is difficult to melt into the camouflage of an office or take refuge among other employees. You are side by side for up to 10 hours a day, often seven days a week. Sometimes you end up travelling together, eating together. It is impossible to hide from each other. So if there are problems they need to be dealt with quickly.

The trouble is that many players have two forms of expression: silence and rage. So when there is rage, it is too late to deal with any problems, it's time to look for a new bag.

A caddie performs numerous tasks for his/her player. The duties range from nanny to porter. There is no job description, our positions are never advertised in the employment supplements of the Sunday newspapers. This is where the difficulties of our positions lie: our jobs are largely indefinable.

We carry the bag. We clean the clubs. We organise the bag. We provide accurate distance to our master from ball to hole. We tell him where we think the wind is coming from, how far the ball is going to travel through the fresh, morning air. How far it will roll along the ground when it lands, depending on the type of grass it is hit from.

We advise about altitude and descent. We offer our opinion on lines of putts on the greens. We describe how we see a hole being played from a strategic point of view. We empathise with out masters when we sense a low mood. We speak when spoken to. We speak when the silence becomes so intense that something needs to be said, before an explosion ensues.

We chauffeur, we entertain, we get up early and go home late. We travel around the world across international date lines and through numerous time zones. We hang out in oil-sodden country-club car parks waiting for our men to arrive.

But if you were to ask a player what he wanted from a caddie he would probably struggle to tell you what he wanted. It is such a vague position that it is virtually impossible to describe in words. But get out on the golf course, under the uncompromising conditions that top professional golf presents to you, and you will figure out exactly what a golfer under pressure needs without really being able to describe it.

The trouble with not having a job description is that you are never really sure exactly what you should be doing. What is appropriate for one player may be a disaster for another. So the first rule of caddying is to be flexible and try to adapt to your player's needs. Then you must be careful not to be sucked into pandering to his whimsical wants when in fact they are detrimental to his performance.

It is rare that difficulties in a player/caddie relationship are actually discussed between the parties involved. A player may have up to 10 people in his personal entourage. With managers, secretaries, psychologists, physiotherapists, personal trainers, tailors, chefs and coaches, the caddie can be just a small cog in the increasingly large machinery of the modern golf professional. The team can sense fragility, the caddie, in the heat of battle on the course, gets to feel the full brunt of this fragility.

This is why so many partnerships break up; the intensity on the course can become too great to sustain.

Darren Clarke has been together with his caddie JP Fitzgerald for not much more than a year. They were obviously having some relationship difficulties and instead of letting the problems escalate uncontrollably they decided at the start of last week at Hilton Head to make it their last week together.

They both agreed to try to make it a good one and end their relationship on a high note. This is an uncharacteristically mature way to deal with the ongoing difficulties we face as the advisors of golfers. Obviously the two had considerable financial success together but the money was not enough to sustain the relationship; the fact was that they were not getting along.

So Darren is looking for a replacement caddie. Must be able to carry a heavy bag, travel extensively, read his master's mind under varying degrees of pressure and give impeccable advice on the golf course. If you feel you are up to the task , why not throw your name in the hat?