
Today, the typical path to being a major championship-winning caddie is arduous. It takes hard work, years of experience, establishing a relationship with a player and bonding as a team.
Fifty years ago, however, all Bob Whaling did was fill out a form.
“I was at my home club, Old Town in Winston-Salem [North Carolina], and the pro told me about applications to caddie for the PGA at Tanglewood,” he said. “So, I filled one out and sent it in.”
In 1974, all three professional major championships in the United States prohibited competitors from bringing their own caddies. The PGA Championship, the U.S. Open, and the Masters Tournament each provided and assigned local caddies. (The rule didn’t exist at the Open Championship, but almost no tour caddies traveled to the United Kingdom until the 1980s due to cost.)
At the time, the host club was responsible for most all organizational aspects, so Tanglewood Golf Club in Clemmons, North Carolina, began taking caddie applications for the 56th PGA Championship that summer. Five hundred and fifty applied. A committee whittled the number down to the 180 most qualified.
Whaling was one of them. The 21-year-old had just graduated from Davidson College and was taking it easy that summer by relaxing at his parents’ home before enrolling in law school at UNC-Chapel Hill in the fall. He was typical of a volunteer caddie. The previous year’s champion, Jack Nicklaus, had a college musician who moonlighted in a rock band. The champion before that, Gary Player, had a high school student.
Whaling’s only caddying experience had been for his father, but being a single-digit golfer ensured he was selected. Next, he and all those chosen had to attend a two-day caddie camp where they walked the Robert Trent Jones-designed course and were taught basic rules and etiquette, such as how to rake a bunker, and even how to hand a player his club.
The lessons were rudimentary for someone such as Whaling, but not everyone. “A lot of people there definitely needed some caddie training,” he said. The committee’s biggest fear was assigning a superstar such as Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer the world’s worst caddie.
Two weeks before the championship, a draw party randomly paired caddies with their players. Whaling’s younger brother Alex drew Lenny Stroup, a club pro from Idaho, but as they continued down the field alphabetically, Bob had not been selected. Then, when they got to Lee Trevino, he heard his name.
“I was lucky to get Trevino, but I was lucky to get anyone at all,” said Whaling, who would have been a reserve caddie or a forecaddie had his name gone uncalled.
Whaling read up on the Merry Mex and walked the course several times with a measuring wheel, doing the things he thought would be most helpful. But he wasn’t going to replace a tour caddie overnight. Nor did the PGA of America want him to.
While the host venues did have a desire to provide their own caddies a week of employment, the PGA and USGA had a larger objective with the rule: they thought the elite players who had and could afford regular caddies would have an unfair advantage over those who didn’t.
Not surprisingly, the ban wasn’t popular among the top-echelon players such as Johnny Miller and Gary Player. After all, it was aimed at them.
“Caddies are like jockeys,” said John Wood, who spent 24 years caddying on the PGA Tour before crossing over to the golf broadcast world with NBC. “If they have a good horse, they can help. Really good caddies can be worth a shot a day.”
Even Nicklaus disliked the stipulation, although he rarely leaned on his regular caddie, Angelo Argea. “I saw the world’s greatest player get his own yardage, choose his own clubs, read his own puts, and never ask a caddie anything about how to play golf,” said the late Tom Weiskopf.
Nicklaus would win his 18 professional majors with 10 different caddies. Of all his records, it’s probably the one least likely to be touched. Still, Nicklaus would prefer to have someone whom he knew and, most importantly, someone who was reliable and trustworthy.
At Tanglewood, he was given a middle-aged hospital executive. After two practice days, the caddie developed blisters so severe that he quit. A reserve caddie was summoned on the morning of the opening round. “Nicklaus was not happy,” Whaling said.

PGA Tour Archive, Getty Images
Under the circumstances, comfort seemed to be the objective for the world’s best players. “I would want somebody who I got along with and enjoyed being around,” Wood said. “If you weren’t comfortable around the guy for any reason, that wouldn’t be good.”
Trevino arrived Tuesday morning. He was accompanied by his manager, Albert Salinas, and his regular tour caddie and chauffeur, Neal Harvey. Becoming comfortable among the team didn’t take long for Whaling. After Trevino found out Whaling’s future plans, he began telling the entire practice range that “only in America can a Mexican-American golfer have a lawyer as his caddie.”
Harvey was Trevino’s regular caddie from 1968 until 1976 when he left the tour and his friend Herman Mitchell took the bag. “You can never tell what kind of a caddie you’ll get in these majors,” he said. “We were very lucky to get Bobby. … He remembered everything we told him.”
Harvey walked with them during the practice rounds and gave Whaling his first instruction: Trevino stopped talking only when he became nervous, so if he ever was at a loss for words, Whaling should start a conversation.
Trevino then gave him his second responsibility. His routine on the tee involved visualizing his shot and not taking his eyes off the fairway. He told Whaling, “I’m going to stick my hand out to the right, and when I do, I want you to put the driver shaft in my hand. I’m not going to look at you. And I don’t want to look around for you, either.”
“Those were the only two things he wanted me to do,” Whaling said.
He wound up having to do only one of those. Trevino’s confidence was so high that he hardly took a breath all week. He avoided the deep, wet Bermudagrass rough, missing only a handful of fairways. Using a putter that he found in the attic of the house he was renting, Trevino reeled off his final three rounds in the 60s to outlast Nicklaus by one stroke for his first PGA Championship victory and fifth major title.
After the final putt, the player and caddie hugged, a moment captured in an Associated Press photograph that ran in dozens of newspapers across the country. Only Whaling’s back was visible – apropos of the anonymous figures caddies were at the time in majors.Whaling received a check for $4,000 – about 9 percent of Trevino’s $45,000 first-place prize and in line with what a tour caddie would have received. It was reflective of Whaling’s effort. Five years earlier, the champion Raymond Floyd had paid his caddie just $1,000 after winning $35,000.
“I didn’t really do a whole lot,” Whaling said. “He did it all. But I guess we were a team, and team members get credit.”
Whaling would be the last local caddie to be on the bag of a PGA champion.
Several weeks later, Miller threatened to boycott the championship in 1975 if the organization didn’t rescind the rule. “I promise you I will not play the PGA next year unless I can have my caddie,” he said after giving credit to a victory at Westchester to his regular caddie, Andy Martinez. “Having our own caddies is just something that makes us look more professional. The days of the caddie being a wino or a drunkard are over.”
In December, the PGA of America announced they would allow players to bring whomever they wanted starting in 1978. “Because of the growing shortage of top-quality caddies, we believe we should relieve the local sponsor of this contractual responsibility to provide enough properly trained caddies to service a championship field,” said Bill Clarke, who was the PGA of America’s president in 1973-74. Several months later, after further pushback from players, the PGA made it effective immediately.
On cue, the 1975 championship was won by Nicklaus with Argea on his bag. After dozens of PGA Tour wins, it was the first major for the game’s most recognizable caddie.
The USGA followed for the 1976 U.S. Open, and executive committee member Sandy Tatum gave a more blunt explanation for the change: “We are less concerned about someone being assisted in winning an Open by a particularly effective caddie than by someone losing because of a caddie who is less than competent.”
Then in 1983 after some club caddies didn’t show up for a rain-delayed start the previous year, Augusta National finally allowed tour caddies to work the Masters. It ended an era, and soon big money would usher a new one in which the professional tour caddie became even more important to the player and visible to the public.
Whaling, now retired after successful careers in insurance and finance, is often reminded of that August week a half century ago, sometimes in ways unexpected.
“When Scottie Scheffler won the Masters, they said his caddie Ted Scott now has four major championships,” Whaling said. “I thought, Wow, that’s pretty cool.
“I’ve got one too.”
Gil Capps is editorial adviser for NBC Sports’ golf broadcasts and author of “The Magnificent Masters.”