At the 2009 Open Championship, Nardecchia carried some extra baggage along with Calcavecchia's bag, knowing that a year ago, she'd been the subject of public ridicule for pulling out of her job last minute. It was, in fact, her husband who had benched her at Birkdale because she wasn't feeling well, but that didn't matter. The British press jumped at the chance to make it seem as if Nardecchia had been too worried about getting her hair messed up in the bad weather. Needless to say, those comments didn't sit well with Mrs. Calc, and she made up for the embarrassment this year by helping her hubby to a 67-69 start at Turnberry (he would eventually finish T-27, at +4).
Ever since Fanny Sunesson picked up Nick Faldo's bag in 1990 and became the most famous tour caddie of her time, male or female, I've had a secret desire to be a professional looper. I just never had the muscle. As a teenager in Sweden, I carried my brother Martin's bag at a few tournaments (a PGA pro, he played on the Swedish Tour from time to time), but only if he'd let me use a lightweight carry bag. Try as I might, I could never do the big staff bag. Perhaps I'm miserably weak, but those suckers weigh roughly 15 lbs. without adding a single club, much less a dozen balls, rain gear, sandwiches (my bro can put away a lot of sandwiches), water bottles, coins, sunscreen and everything else a golfer needs. All in all, the typical weight of a tour player's bag during a tournament round is somewhere north of 40 lbs. Add to that the undulating terrain and 30-mile-per-hour wind gusts at Turnberry last week, and Nardecchia's feat is even more impressive. But most extraordinary of all is the fact that she's looping for her husband, who's a professional golfer -- notoriously one of the most anal-retentive, self-absorbed breeds of man in the world. Just being married to a tour player must take great patience, but to also be his caddie? Brenda Nardecchia might just possess super-human genes. My hat's off to her. -- Stina Sternberg
(Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
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