My Experience Caddying in a Monday Qualifier

This past Monday I caddied for mini tour player Matt Snyder in a Monday qualifier for the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Matt lives in Vegas, plays on the eGolf Tour and his instructor is a friend of mine, Mario Bevilacqua (also based in Vegas).

Matt had made it through the pre-qualifier and something came up with Matt's regular caddie so Mario called me and wanted to see if I could caddie for the day. I was going to be in Vegas anyway to take pics and videos of the Shriners Tournament. Here is all that in case you haven't seen it.

For those of you that may not know, a Monday qualifier is a stroke play tournament held on the Monday before a professional golf tournament that awards top finishers entry into the event. On the PGA Tour, an eighteen-hole pre-qualifier for entry into each Monday qualifier is also held before the Monday qualifier. The entry fee for a PGA Tour pre-qualifier to the Monday qualifier is $200 and the entry fee for the PGA Tour Monday qualifier is an additional $200.

Matt's a good dude and a solid player. He hits it a long ways, owns his pattern and is a good putter. For my role as caddy I mostly just carried the bag, cleaned the clubs and rooted him on. I met Matt the day before at dinner so I only gave him my input when he asked. He knows AimPoint so that made things easier for us on the greens.

The Monday qualifier was held at Dragon Ridge Country Club and was modified from a par 72 to a par 70. There were four spots available to make it into the Shriners Open. The course was playing about 6800 yards and two of the par 5's were shortened to 460/470 yard par 4's. Even though the medalist shot 62 and there was a playoff for the guys that shot 64, Dragon Ridge isn't an "easy" course. The greens are relatively small, lots of slope to the greens, lots of elevation changes, rough was thick, target golf layout and a decent amount of the pins were three or four paces off the edge of the greens.

Matt shot 70, 3 bogeys and 3 birdies. If would have been cool if he had made it into the tournament because his home course is the TPC Summerlin. He left a few shots out there but overall played a good round. Matt has been a pro for a year so this was a great learning experience for him. Just to put things in perspective, Matt plays to a +4/5 handicap when he plays his home course. I think he was a +1/2 when he started working with Mario.

Here's a few things that stood out to me and what I want to highlight about my experience and the players:

• You had to shoot 64 just to get in the playoff. Think about that for a second. The guys just trying to get into the tournament have the ability to shoot 6,7,8 under par on any given day. Not only does the slogan "These guys are good" apply to the guys with PGA Tour cards but also to the "fringe" players. Lots of good players out there.
• They all have a pattern, they hit the same shot 85-95% of the time. For example Matt plays a push draw, face is slightly right of the target, path is farther right. He didn't try to curve it differently for every shot and neither did the other players in the group. Golf is hard enough, don't make it harder by complicating things.
• There's a lot of golf that goes on "behind the scenes". As I said earlier, there's pre-qualifying and then Monday qualifying before the tournament begins.The field isn't really set in stone until Monday or Tuesday and the guys trying to qualify aren't just mini tour guys, some are former PGA Tour winners (check out some of the scores below). Heath Slocum was suppose to play in the group behind us but he got the call he was in before his tee time. Ted Purdy, Chris Smith, Chris Riley and Vaughn Taylor (all PGA Tour winners) all shot in the 60's and didn't make it.
• Hitting it far is an advantage. Generally it's better to hit a 9 iron from the light rough than a 7 iron from the fairway. The rough was actually pretty thick at Dragon Ridge so hitting the ball in the fairway was an advantage because you had a better chance at controlling your distances. Greens at Dragon Ridge are a little small. The course was also the definition of target-golf, so Matt hit a lot of 4 woods and irons off the tee. Matt length allowed him to still hit mostly mid-short irons even on holes over 400 yards.
• The players are pretty clutch with the putts from 3-4 feet. As a group they only missed two putts inside 4 feet all day and the greens were tricky.
• GIR is king (stole this from @iacas ). If you need to shoot at least 64 to move on, you can't be scrambling for pars, you gotta be hitting greens and giving yourself plenty of birdie chances.
• If you want to hit it farther without changing your swing, have a positive angle of attack with your driver. Matt hits his driver 10-20 yards longer than his playing partners but swings at about the same speed. Matt wasn't a club to club and a half longer with his irons compared to the other players and you could tell the other players hit down with their driver because of how low they teed it and their initial launch angle.
• They don't hit it perfect every time. Most shots were relatively solid but Matt probably only hit 2-3 "perfect" shots. So the takeaway is, to shoot lower scores, improve your mechanics where you can "miss it" and still keep it in play and hit greens.
• It's expensive trying to play professional golf. Matt played two competitive rounds and it cost him $400. Obviously if he had made it into the tournament and made the cut he would have gotten a nice check but you need some savings behind you to try and get there.

Pleas feel free to ask me any questions you guys have.

Some pics of the day. I'm the guy in the shorts carrying the bag

Matt knocked this one stiff.

Some swings