Mark Long: A Caddie Who Can Make All the Difference

When former University of Maryland golf coach successfully broke into the elite PGA Tour at age 32, he was joined by Mark Long, one of his former Terrapin star athletes.

Long didn’t play as a fellow professional golfer, but served as Funk's caddie for several years on the tour.

And Long might well have played a greater role in Funk's success than many might think – going far beyond just being the guy carrying the clubs.

Long is widely regarded as one of golf's foremost experts in measuring distance on golf courses. That skill paid off handsomely for Funk, who was never of the game's longest hitters off the tee.

Rather he was one of the shortest hitters in the professional circuit. But sometimes knowing where to hit the ball can be more important than hitting it a long way.    

For example, in last year’s Jeld-Wen Tradition tournament, at the Crosswater Club in Oregon, Long's measurement ability proved crucial to Funk's victory, according to reports from the scene.

As Long tells it, the par-5 16th hole demands near perfect execution for a birdie.  Long was able to precisely determine where Funk had to hit both his tee shot and his approach in order to pull off this feat.

"We knew exactly where to land it and he did it," Long said in an interview with skygolf.com.  "Turns out it was the only birdie of the day" in the final round of the tournament.

That's a prime example of how a savvy caddie can make the difference between winning ... and losing.

Surprising to those who don’t know much about the sport, a golfer relies on his caddie for more than endurance to carry the golf bag through 18 holes.

In fact, good caddies can make all the difference, writes Larry Dorman, golf writer for The New York Times, who notes that tour professionals have little tolerance for caddies' mistakes on things like when to rake a bunker, where to stand, when to take the flagstick out and when to clean a golf ball for a player.

"Tour caddies work a lot harder than people give them credit for," PGA golfer Charles Howell told Dorman. This was evident when a friend of his caddied for him at an event in Puerto Rico, he said. “It was different having to walk him through the ropes … stuff that as a player you take for granted that the caddie knows what to do, and he didn’t,” Howell said. 

Long spends much of his time these days helping the PGA prepare for major events. Right now he is in Atlanta helping the PGA prepare for its big tournament this weekend.  It is the fourth and final 'major' tourney of the year following the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open.

Although he’s possibly the district's foremost authority on caddying, "I'm actually retired as a caddie now," Long told golf guru Steve Czaban who hosts the Sunday morning golf show on ESPN-980.

That’s why when Tiger Woods recently fired his longtime caddie, Steve Williams, it was only a fleeting interest for Long to fill that position.

"My first thought is that Tiger is going to pull someone out that isn't (actively) caddying right now," maybe an old friend from Stanford or someone else close to him, Long said in the same interview.

As it turned out, Long was right on the money with that prediction.  Tiger selected a long-time friend, Bryan Bell.

Ironically, this past weekend it was Williams, Woods' former caddie, who had the last laugh. Williams wound up on the bag for Australian Adam Scott who performed brilliantly in winning the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio, while Tiger, making a return to the tour after a lengthy absence due to injuries and personal problems, finished far back in the field.

Commentators quipped that caddie Williams looked like he knew nearly every blade of grass on the Firestone Country Club course by its first name.