The topic of price to nearby caddies has been a popular one in golf this season, for reasons that we probably don’t want to hash another time now (Refreshers here, here, and here).
Let’s say there remains the question of what a victorious professional golfer have to pay a caddie while it’s no longer someone traveling with him full-time. Is it nevertheless ten percentage of a win? Way much less than that?
What about all of the cash you earned, plus a bit extra?
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Sounds loopy, but this happening in the Masters extra than a half-century in the past, while Arnold Palmer captured his first of 4 new jackets in 1958. Palmer gained $11,250 for that win, but his take a look at to Nathaniel “Iron Man” Avery for that week changed into . . . $14,000. Was Arnold Palmer the most generous man ever?
Well, he’s up there, however, no, not in this instance. As part of a compelling profile of Avery, Palmer’s caddie for all 4 of his Masters’ titles, Ward Clayton in The Caddie Network describes how Palmer’s spouse Winnie rapidly dashed off a test to Avery in the on the spot aftermath:
“In Palmer’s first Masters victory in 1958, it became the goal to pay a caddie price of $1,400, but Arnie’s wife Winnie turned into triumph over through the instant and hurriedly wrote a take a look at for $14,000 — more than Palmer’s $11,250 first prize — and Iron Man’s check become later reissued.”
So Avery genuinely best got $1, four hundred for the win, but that was still precise cash again then—more than $12, a hundred in these days’ cash, and nevertheless greater than ten percent of Palmer’s first-region take a look at. And it’s well worth noting that Avery becomes no longer Palmer’s complete-time looper when you consider that tour gamer then largely depended on nearby caddies and the Masters itself waited till 1983 to allow players use their ordinary guys.
Meanwhile, the Avery story isn’t a wholly happy one, even if it did take a brighter turn in latest years. Although he loved the spoils of victory in the immediate aftermath of Palmer’s wins, he died with none cash and alienated from his family, buried in an unmarked grave in Augusta’s Southview Cemetery. Clayton, who is additionally one of the manufacturers of the brand new caddie documentary, “Loopers,” diagnosed Avery deserved higher, so he helped provoke the effort to present Avery a proper grave marker that venerated his Master’s accomplishments.
“It’s . . . An appropriate memorial I’m proud to say we were able to make occur,” Clayton writes.
