LAS VEGAS — Tim Tucker just can’t stay away.
The veteran PGA Tour caddie is back on a bag this week, looping for Chesson Hadley at the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas.
Why would Tucker, who owns a successful shuttle operation at Bandon Dunes and who has invented a putting alignment device and who loves to dive into with data, go back to his old gig?
“Because Chesson’s a great guy,” Tucker said after monitoring Hadley’s Tuesday range session. “He asked me a year ago to caddie here and I didn’t. I told him I wished I would have because, you know, it’s fun to get around different players and see what they’re doing. You learn more, you can help them in some of a different way. So it’s awesome. And he’s a great guy.”
Tucker, who has invented a putting aid called True Aim, has long been a tinkerer.
On Tuesday, he was watching Hadley hit iron shot after iron shot while calculating data from a Trackman as well as a Foresight launch monitor. Some of the discussion involved altitude, temperature, wind speed and even barometric pressure.
SHRINERS: Thursday tee times | PGA Tour Live on ESPN+
“I was in the military, I was on a rifle team. And we used anemometers for long range,” he said as he explained how back in 2016 he and DeChambeau really started to explore metrics. “We started to apply that to golf ball density, temperature and barometric pressure, all that mattered determines how far the ball is going, temperature and altitude in time, then it’s quantifiable. So we started with that, when we started working into green density and understanding with angle of descent of an iron shot with a certain spin rate leading into a certain slope, then the run out was predictable. And so we started doing that, and we just kept on and we never stopped.”
Tucker was alongside DeChambeau for all eight of his PGA Tour victories, including the 2020 U.S. Open but it was their breakup in July 2021 on the eve of the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit that made headlines in the golf world.
“It’s just one of those things that just happened. For better or for worse,” Tucker said. “Bryson doesn’t need me to play great golf, and he’s proven that. The kid is amazing athlete.
“He turned me into what people would say is a reliable, good caddie. Whether I am or not, that’s the perception because of him, right? And, you know, he helped me make a lot of money. Help me get my kids through college. You know, and so I’m forever in his debt.”
Today, the two are still friends.
“We’re good. Yeah, absolutely. I’ve talked to him probably once every two weeks, you know?,” Tucker said. “And we don’t really necessarily talk about golf. We just talked about, he’s building his dream house and talk to him about that, or talk to him about long drive.”
DeChambeau recently finished second in the World Long Drive Championships, about 90 miles northwest of TPC Summerlin in Mesquite, Nevada. That performance didn’t surprise Tucker.
“He’s the hardest working guy I’ve ever seen. And like, dedicated to his intensity level, his dedication is second to none. He is laser focused. When he when he gets it in his head, he’s gonna do something he gets it done.”
So when he’s not working as a part-time caddie or pitching his True Aim putting device, Tucker’s putting as much time and energy into Loop Golf Transportation, a high-end shuttle service that gets golfers to and from Bandon Dunes in Oregon. Tucker used to caddie at Bandon and knows the lay of the land of the remote location. Looping on the Tour from time to time gives him the chance to let more people know about it.
“It’s great being out here because you know, we get a lot of exposure,” he said. “Players are always helping me out. Stewart Cink asked me ‘What was the name of your business in Bandon again? I know people going there all the time. I’ll tell them.’ Yeah, I mean, how nice is that?”
Tucker said he’s not trying to overload Hadley this week with numbers and Hadley himself said he doesn’t want too much of the deep data. But everyone who Tucker caddies for knows that he knows what he’s talking about.
“I worked for Lexi [Thompson] in the Women’s Open and there was an article that came out, like they tried to make Lexi seem like she wasn’t wasn’t able to handle the information that Bryson is. And of course she she’s smartest can be. I mean, these are pro golfers. This is what they do. They look at his stuff. Some of the stuff they may not pay attention to. But once you show it to him, if they get it, they understand it, this is what they do.
“And I hated that for her that they did that, you know, and it was unfair because she’s a very intelligent woman.”
[mm-video type=playlist id=01es6rjnsp3c84zkm6 player_id=01evcfxp4q8949fs1e image=https://golfweek.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
