There's not a lot to being a caddy, even on Tour. A very good friend of mine currently caddies for a Tour player.
The yardage books for the course are made by a former caddy. They look like war battle plane. Sometimes if there's a hole with a high elevation, they may take a rangefinder with the slope and shoot it in the practice round to figure out what it's playing like.
What they'll also do is go out on the course beforehand and be told the spots where they usually put the flag. Then the caddy will go out on the course, with other caddies, roll the ball to those positions and get an idea of how the putt rolls from different spots. But even the experienced caddies don't always do this because they have already charted the green years ago.
Mostly, the veteran caddies are very good at reading greens. Those guys always find work. Plenty of Tour players will have a caddy for a few months and then dump him, just because they like to change things up every couple of months.
So...it's the guys who can read greens that become veterans. There's no sense in some mid-level player to hire a caddy who doesn't read greens well. So if they are looking for a new caddy, they usually get referred to the best green readers out there.
That's what Steve Williams is known for, reading greens.
YR
