A golfer can often be accused of not treating their caddie well enough, but Danielle Kang won’t be one of those players after getting a taste of what it’s like carrying the bag full-time.
And Kang wasn’t even carrying the bag, literally, of her brother Alex when he asked her to accompany him in his Monday qualifier for the Shriners Open.
Kang, who earlier in the year revealed she had a spinal tumor, which saw her take three months off for treatment, has been trying to limit her schedule accordingly. When caddying earlier this week, she needed a trolley - but still helped her brother out in between playing back-to-back tournaments herself.
It proved to be a testing experience as she had to fit in a lesson with coach Butch Harmon in Las Vegas before helping her brother at the Shriners – which is also being staged in Vegas.
“It's really tough for me to play two weeks in a row and walk, walk seven, eight miles a day and have to practice, the whole thing,” said Kang at this week's LPGA MediheaL Championship.
“I had to go home to see Butch because we were going to Korea after this and I don't have time to go back home and do my physio.
“So as I'm flying home my brother goes, can you caddie for me? The one person I never say no to is my brother. I can't carry it, so I said, can you get me a push cart? It has to have three wheels minimum because I can't do the two wheels. He goes, yeah, yeah, no problem.
“I woke up 4:00 in the morning, did the warm-up, went and saw Butch at 6:30, did a lesson for a few hours, saw Nick Watney, and drove back, picked up my brother, went to the golf course, and caddied 18 holes. It was wild. It was a wild day.”
Kang previously caddied for her brother when he won a US Open qualifier, but this time he came up short and she was given the full experience of trying to caddie while being exhausted.
“I never realised how hard it was because I wanted to complain that I was so tired,” Kang added. “I couldn't say it out loud to the player. I just couldn't.
“He kept handing me the ball on the green and I go, what do you want me to do with this? Oh, he wanted me to clean it, but I kept forgetting the towel, so I was very absent minded.”
The experience, though, worked out well for Kang’s own caddie Oliver Brett as his boss now has a new-found respect for his job – and he’s bagged some extra holiday.
“I thought to myself, my God, my caddie must have days where he just doesn't want to work. So I created a three-day pass thing where he can tell me three days out of the entire year where he just says, D, I don't want to work today.
“I don't know if he's ever going to use it, but I had to create that.”
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