Colorful expressions dot the lives of TOUR caddies

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My former caddie this week said that his new man, Billy Mayfair, who ranks 156th on the money list, needs to make $400,000 in the next month, "The way that Custer needed an air strike." As Larry the Cable Guy would say, "I don't care who you are -- that's just funny." Golfers and caddies use the most wonderfully disturbing expressions to describe themselves and their golf games.

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I have often said that I couldn't "fight my way out of a wet paper bag." Usually I said that on days when I couldn't "putt it in the ocean." Some of these expressions can be more colorful than others. The late Stiles Mitchell was a master of them.

Like most Nationwide Tour players, especially back in the 1990s, Mitchell was in a constant struggle for money. One afternoon, as he was enjoying a beer beside a river in South Dakota, he said, "I am so broke if they were giving away riverboats over there for a dollar apiece all I could do is run up and down the shore screaming, 'Ain't That Cheap? Ain't That Cheap?'"

Any time the caddies assemble during tournament week, you can count on pearls, some of which can even be printed here. Once in a particular restaurant where wings are served by women in orange gym shorts, a half dozen pro loopers were lamenting the results of the first round at the TPC Sugarloaf. One caddie, whose boss had withdrawn after the first round, sat down, pulled his yardage book out of his pocket and slammed it on the table, saying, "I don't need that anymore -- my guy just called it a week."

Before the book even came to a stop on the slick table another caddie scooped it up and asked, "Does this thing have yardages from the left trees on every hole?" The guys at the table laughed as another caddy asked, "Your boy have a little case of the hooks?" The caddie holding the book laughed and said, "My man is playing every hole from left of Moscow."

Very few players have thick enough skin to listen to a caddie rant session. A player who isn't getting anything out of his game can be known as a "grass-smasher." As in, "My man didn't do anything out there today but smash grass."

So remember that it doesn't matter if you are a chop, duffer, slasher, gasher, chump or hack -- the guys that you watch on television are saying worse things about themselves than you are saying about yourself. A well-paid sports psychologist once tried to explain to me the importance of positive self-talk. Obviously, there is logic in that point of view.

Of course, there aren't too many quacks, head-shrinkers or pseudo-gurus who have ever three-putted on No. 18 in front of 15,000 people to miss the cut by a shot. What do they know about being a trunk slammer anyway?

Former PGA TOUR player John Maginnes is a columnist for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily represent the views of the PGA TOUR.