Scratch

I wasn't even playing, I was caddying, and I could feel my stomach in my throat as Tim Atkins stood over a 4-foot birdie putt on the 11th hole. I've seen Tim ...

We had only one hole left, but when he gets angry on the golf course, I tend to just leave him alone, and I tried to do that on the last hole. He tried to overcorrect the pull and pushed his next shot to the right, out of bounds. They both made sure to point out that he would be better off teeing it from the proper markers and I thought we probably shouldn't overthink things, but we might want to think a little harder on the next hole as to not make any mistakes. Tim hadn't mentioned anything about feeling like he was going to pull his shots in a while, and I frankly had forgotten about it. In the 20 years Tim and I have known each other, I can't remember another time that I've heard him say he was nervous on a golf course. But I wanted to do a good job this time, so I spoke to golfer Chase Koepka about what to expect and what we should do on the course from a professional player's point of view. I said I'd bring a note pad and write down observations about the course and the greens to really dig in to being a caddie. I could tell there was something bothering him, and at that moment, he turned to me and said, "I'm nervous." I also conveniently left out the statistics on how rare it is for amateurs to make a splash in this event, because a good caddie focuses on the positives. He's a competitor, and while he hasn't experienced this level of tournament play, any player would want to feel confident about what they can do on the course. The only setting that comes close to giving a regular player a sniff of what that feels like is in U.S. Open qualifying. He sank the birdie putt, gave a small fist pump, looked at me and nodded his head as if he knew what that putt had meant for his round.