[PHOTO: Keyur Khamar]
It will take golf fans some time getting used to seeing Tiger Woods wearing something other than Nike apparel when he next plays, but they’re also still adjusting to the 15-time major champion not having Joe LaCava on the bag.
After a decade of wins and laughs, the two parted ways last year so that LaCava could caddie on a more full-time basis for Patrick Cantlay. Woods and LaCava remain good friends, however, and the looper discussed that and more with former caddie John Rathouz on the “Quiet Please” podcast.
Why Tiger Woods fans shouldn’t be freaking out about his split with Joe LaCava
LaCava says that the two things that struck him most when he went to work for Woods more than a dozen years ago is how “low maintenance” he was and that he never once blamed Joe for a bad club or a misread on the green. You should check out the entire interview below, but we especially enjoyed Joe telling a funny tale about the first time he and Tiger “clicked” on the golf course.
It happened in their first event working together, the 2011 Frys.com Open, less than two months after Woods split with Steve Williams. Apparently Woods hadn’t asked Joe for much until they got to a par 3 on the back nine when Woods asked about the distance to a pin on a two-tiered green. We’ll let LaCava take it from here:
“He hadn’t really asked me anything all day so he kind of caught me off guard, although I think I was ready,” LaCava recalls. “He said to me, ‘Can I get 7-iron there?’ And I said, ‘You can get it on top, but you can’t get it to the hole.’ And so he hits this beautiful little tight draw, 10 feet right of the hole, pin-high, beautiful shot. And he just kinda gave me a look without saying anything as if to say, ‘Don’t ever tell me I can’t do something.’ You know, I got that look and I thought it was great.”
Good stuff, but the story gets even better.
“About four minutes later, we walk up to the green and the ball is barely short of pin-high, so I look at him and I say, ‘Well, it’s not pin-high.’ And he smiled at me… It was one of those things, right away we clicked. And we knew we were going to get along very well and give each other a hard time, which we still do to this day.”
And thus, a great golf duo was born. Good for LaCava giving it back to Tiger like that from Day 1. You can watch LaCava tell the story below, beginning at the 25:55 mark:
