COMMENTARY

Park’s caddie must lift, carry, clean and splash

ROGERS- Brad Beecher has gone swimming quite a bit lately, but pools are for amateurs.

He tends to find a water hazard near the 18th hole of a golf course and jumps in with the rest of his “mates.” It’s so spontaneous that he doesn’t have time to change into a bathing suit before diving in.

Considering the rate that Inbee Park is winning major championships on the LPGA Tour, her caddie might want to pack an extra pair of dry clothes. After all, he has taken several celebratory plunges into ponds over the past few months.

“I’m very superstitious like that,” Beecher said, cracking a smile. “I will never do anything like that.”

Perhaps no one has gotten a closer look at Park’s meteoric rise to the top of the LPGA’s money list and Rolex Rankings than Beecher, her caddiefor the past six years.

Beecher, a former Australian amateur golfer, travels to every tournament with Park. So, he carried her bag and helped her read greens as she won the first two majors of the season at the Kraft Nabisco Championship and the Wegmans LPGA Championship.

Beecher, 30, has watched Park make changes to her swing and, more important, has observed the change in her demeanor now that her fiance and swing coach Gihyeob Nam accompanies her on tour.

“She’s like a little sister, but she’s the boss,” Beecher said while standing at the practice green at Pinnacle Country Club as Park worked on her putting before the start of the Wal-Mart Northwest Arkansas Championship.

Along with his usual duties, Beecher has at least one unwritten responsibility as the caddie for the world’s topranked player. The number four is considered bad luck in South Korea, where Park is from, so Beecher makes sure that there are no No. 4 golf balls in her bag.

Park, 24, said Beecher does “everything” for her, which explains why she has kept him on her bag since hiring him halfway through her rookie season in 2007. And it hasbeen a lucrative pairing.

With Beecher handing her clubs and cracking jokes with her, Park has won four tournaments and earned $1.2 million so far this season. They have been together for sevencareer victories and three major championships, accounting for $6.4 million in career earnings.

“He gives me the yardage, and we discuss about how it’s actually playing. And he helps me with the putts also,” Park said. “I think it’s mostly he just makes me very comfortable, somebody to talk to on the course.

“We just feel very comfortable with being together.”

The golfer and caddie have such a comfort level that Beecher can judge Park’s mood on the golf course. He’s always ready to crack a joke with her as they walk 18 holes, but nobody wants a stand-up comedian breaking out one-liners throughout a round.

“We’ve been together so long you know what moments to talk and what moments not to talk,” Beecher said. “The majority of the time, she’s happy to talk at anytime really.”

Like most caddies, Beecherprefers to hang back and go unnoticed. Sure, he appears in many of the photos that can be found on the Internet of Park splashing around in a pond after winning a major. But he joked earlier this week that no one wants to write a story about him.

Headlines are reserved for his little sister/boss, not him.

Of course, Beecher has walked alongside Park as she has become the first LPGA player since Annika Sorenstam in 2005 to win the first two majors of the year. He has had inside-the-rope access to one of the more dominant runs in recent LPGA history.

So how does he explain what Park has done over the past year?

“It’s … how do I say it?” Beecher said, searching for the right words. “It’s been phenomenal to watch, it really has, but I’ve always seen it in her.”

Now, they’re swimming partners.

Sports, Pages 22 on 06/22/2013

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