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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — When longtime caddie turned broadcaster John Wood received a call last June from then PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, he understood the thinking behind the concept of the U.S. Ryder Cup team having a team manager.
Every two years, the U.S. team starts from scratch with a new captain who is expected to handle every decision from the menu to the design of the locker room. Waugh and the PGA leadership determined that there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.
“So, whoever the next captain is and the one after that and after that, they can concentrate more on the players, the competition, the golf course, winning 14 and half points, and not ‘What are we having for dinner on Thursday night?’” Wood explained.
But what he never expected was for Waugh to offer the team manager to him.
“I was shocked,” Wood recalled during an interview with Golfweek at the Procore Championship in Napa, California. “I love the Ryder Cup more than anything I’ve ever gotten to do in this game and when he called and started talking about the position, what they were thinking of doing, my honest reaction was, this is really cool that they’re asking me who I think should do this job. I thought they were calling me for suggestions, like, who might be good? And I was honored at that. Next thing you know, he says, ‘No, we’re talking to you because we’d like you to do this with your Ryder Cup experience and knowing the different sides and the players and what goes on and what needs to get done.’
“I couldn’t get yes out of my mouth fast enough. It’s like Santa Claus saying you want to ride on my sleigh with me, you know?”
Wood caddied in six Ryder Cups (for Hunter Mahan and Matt Kuchar) and served as an assistant in Paris in 2018 for Jim Furyk. He also caddied in seven Presidents Cups but since switching to his TV role with NBC and Golf Channel, he had assumed that his days in the team room were behind him.
“Once you’re in a team room, you never want to miss one again. It kills you to miss it,” he said. “When you have been in a team room and you don’t make it a certain year, it’s hard to watch because you know how fun it is, and you know how much you’re pulling for the guys. I was a baseball player growing up so I love being on a team and having everybody pulling on the same rope.”
Team manager is a new position so what exactly it entails is being defined on the fly. Wood has served as a sounding board to players, caddies and the backroom staff, a jack of all trades who is available to do everything from making sure the caddies have their towels to ensuring Team USA has a detailed daily agenda of what is expected of them. No request is too small if it helps Team USA reach 14 ½ points.
“During a Ryder Cup, players, caddies, wives, vice captains, they might make one decision that gets you the half point you need. It’s that fine,” Wood said. “Whether it’s a caddie giving advice on a Friday that goes against what the player wants to do, whether it’s a wife talking to their husband in the morning who might be really nervous and settling them down and playing, whether it’s a vice captain suggesting a pairing, you just don’t know what that half point might be, and if I can do anything to get them the half point, whether it’s something organizationally or talking to one of the rookie caddies, I’m going to do everything in my power that I can think of from the Ryder Cups I’ve worked to make it easiest on those guys to go play.”
Wood is the team’s unofficial 13th man and the PGA couldn’t have picked a better person to fill this role initially. Michelle Tesori, the wife of longtime Tour caddie Paul Tesori, summed it up perfectly in a social media post after Wood’s position was announced publicly.
“When you love something so much, they create a position for you,” she wrote.
Wood’s most valuable contribution may not come until in the future. The idea is to have someone available to the captain who has institutional memory of what worked (and didn’t work) in the past.
“If future captains ask, ‘Hey, how did Keegan handle this or how did we do that in the past,’ I’ll be able to tell them this is exactly how we did it. And if you want to change it let’s talk about it, but if you want me to handle it, I can just take it off their plate,” Wood said.
While players and captain will come and go, Wood has the potential to be an invaluable component to the future success of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, the behind-the-scenes glue guy that keeps everything together. Asked if there were any other responsibilities bestowed upon the team manager, he smiled and said, “I was joking with the guys early in the year that I can make trades so you better behave around me.”
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