Caddies (by kind permission of Golf Quarterly)

To many people Bobby Jones was a greater golfer than Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, and his wondrous Grand Slam of the US and British Opens and Amateur Championships in 1930 will surely never be repeated.

But I differ from the Great Man on the subject of caddies. Jones was famously quoted as saying: ‘If I needed advice from my caddie, he’d be hitting the shots and I’d be carrying the bag’. While I wouldn’t go as far as Bob Hope (‘I never kick my ball in the rough or improve my lie in the sandtrap – for that I have a caddie’), a good caddie in my book is a huge advantage to golfers of every level.

It is hard to visualise Jack Nicklaus standing on the threshold of a windswept triumph at the Open without the gnarled Jimmy Dickinson by his side, or Nick Faldo striding towards glory without Fanny Sunesson barking the crowd to order. Steve Williams was New Zealand’s best paid sportsman in the halcyon years when he was toting Tiger’s bag.

It is striking how the top professionals almost invariably acknowledge their debts to their Sancho Panzas. When was the last time you heard a tournament victor embracing their trophy without explaining how ‘we’ played the final round so well? Changing caddies stirs the sporting pages almost as much as football clubs firing managers. Who has not opined on whether Rory McIlroy has made a disastrous mistake in replacing the services of the savvy veteran JP Fitzgerald with his childhood best buddy Harry Diamond? And was Phil Mickelson right to dispense with the legendary Bones after they had had so much success together?

The two most famous collapses in the annals of both the Open and the US Open are often traced back to the respective failures of Jean van de Velde’s and Arnold Palmer’s bagmen to calm their charges when most needed.

Surely at Carnoustie in 1999 Christophe Angiolini should have forcibly wrenched the driver out of the boss’s hands on the fateful 18th tee? Even if he had not managed to do that, could he not have stopped him from attacking the green with the infamous four iron into the stand and persuaded him to chip back onto the fairway, for all that doing so ‘would not have been French’?

The young Mike Reasor, meanwhile, worshipped Arnold, and was given one task – to tell his idol if he seemed to be swinging too fast. Reasor delayed fatally and a seven shot lead evaporated on the back nine in 1966 at Olympic.

Two great caddie triumphs from even longer ago have much happier outcomes. The story of how the unknown 20-year-old American amateur Francis Ouimet overcame the greatest golfers of the age, English invaders Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, to become the first native-born winner of the US Open in 1913, is impossibly romantic. An almost inconceivable part of the adventure is that he had a 10-year-old caddie on his bag, the legendary Eddie Lowery, last minute replacement for his older brother who had been hauled back to school by the truant officer. In spite of the enormous pressure put on him to replace Eddie with someone more experienced as the tournament climaxed in a dramatic play-off, Ouimet remained faithful to the irrepressible kid.

Then there was Gene Sarazen, one of the few golfers to have won all four major professional championships. He always struggled to adapt his American game to the demands of links golf at the Open, before Walter Hagen’s suggestion that Gene take on the ancient Skip Daniels, the oldest and wisest of the guides to the Kent links.

Sarazen and Skip went well together on their first outing at Sandwich, until the crucial moment down the final stretch when Sarazen reached for his fairway wood, ignoring the proffered iron, and duly and disastrously failed to escape from the rough at the Canal Hole. Four years later at Deal, however, Sarazen, having initially abandoned Daniels after being informed that his eyesight was so bad he could barely make out distant greens, at the last minute changed his mind and they were reunited for a memorable triumph. Skip passed away a few months later.

More recently Bernard Gallacher, Ryder Cup captain, said that he would always consult caddies about how their players were performing – and he would invariably receive an honest answer.

In an age of battery-operated trolleys and electronic yardage aids for nearly every course, I still take a caddie and would urge all amateurs to give it a go, at least once. You may find that at the end of the day it’s the difference between joy and gloom.