00:02.68 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Welcome to the ModGolf Podcast, where we speak with the entrepreneurs, the innovators, the disruptors, and the influencers who are shaping the future of golf. I am your host, Colin Weston. 00:20.92 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Special treat today because I am live here with my guest. We're doing a live show here at the RBC Canadian Open at TBC Toronto, Osprey Valley. And i am in this awesome complex here called the Caddie Lounge. And one of the gentlemen that made all this happen is joining me today And that is 28-year caddy PGA Tour veteran Don Donatello, also known as Double D. And Don has managed to pry himself away from the 300 responsibilities he has here, spent a few minutes with us, and he's going to share some amazing stories. And the other thing Levelwear also I've had on the podcast a couple weeks ago, 00:59.53 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast They're the ones that have helped put this together. And with their Who's With You campaign, it all ties into what Don and others are doing here to support caddies and good stuff. So with that, I want to introduce you, Don. Welcome to ModGolf. 01:12.83 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast So Don, I'm just getting to know you here. You shared a couple of stats that actually bent my brain here, blew my mind here. Not only the 28 years on the PGA tour as a caddie, as a looper. 01:27.58 The ModGolf Podcast So why don't you share with us the stats? How many bags have you carried and how many events? Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Been on about 31 bags and I've done over 650 events out here on PGA tour. 01:40.28 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast That is, that's crazy. That is crazy. That's amazing. Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie A lot of miles. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast And you just said one of your best friends, maybe you were best friends because they're good friends because you hadn't been on his bag before and now he's your boss. But I'll let you share who you are on the bag this week at the RBC Canadian Open. 01:57.88 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Yeah, so one of my best friends out here is on the PGA Tour. He's a player. He's been wanting me to caddy for him for a long time, and I did caddy for him a couple times about eight or nine years ago, and it just happened to be that I was open, and he asked me to come caddy for him four weeks ago, and we finished sixth place. His name's Tom Hoge, and this is my fourth week with him here at the Canadian Open. 02:27.35 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Amazing. Month in, you're still friends? Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie It's still honeymoon. We'll see how it goes. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Well, I'll talk to you again on Sunday afternoon on Sunday afternoon to see how it goes. Okay, so a couple things i want you to share with us. Let's start with the main one here. What we're sitting here with the Caddie Lounge. So If you're listening rather than watching here on ModGolf, I will include in the show notes some pictures here and some videos and on our YouTube channel of me walking around and showing this place. But hey, could you describe what the Caddie Lounge is and how this came Because I understand you were instrumental to make this happen? Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So a player that I worked for four and a half years wore a Levelwear hat. And I started to become friends with Levelwear and realized what great of a company they were. And the guy that was running Levelwear he came up to me and he says, "I'd love to do something for the caddies". 03:24.57 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie And I said, the players always get something. They get gifts. They have a barber. They have somebody working on their backs. They have ah activities to do, things to do. And I said, we don't have anything. Nobody does anything for us. And he said, "I might have something up my sleeve. He says, let's talk about this more. And one thing led to another, um I started talking to a tournament about having level wear out to have caddy lounge that would have somebody cutting the hair, video games, ping pong tables, a massage therapist came out, a gifting, whether it be shirts or hats and stuff like that. And one thing led to another. 04:12.89 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie They started that one tournament and everybody heard about it. The other tournaments heard about it. And then every tournament wanted them to have a caddy lounge. And next thing you know, now Levelwear is dressing all the volunteers for these tournaments. They're also in all the tents selling clothing. And now we have the best of the best. Now we feel like we're treated like players. and walking around here and seeing the energy and the positivity with all the caddies. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast It's amazing what you have helped create and what Levelwear it's put in place. But again, as I mentioned, ties in with their who's with you campaign, this notion of it takes a village, whether you're a player or a caddie, whoever that is, a junior golfer, a recreational golfer, that support that you need. Because golf, I'm sure in caddying could be a very lonely pursuit, especially doing over 600 events like you've done. So let's expand on that. I'm sure some of your best friends over the decades are your fellow loopers here. So this gives you a chance to come together and spend some time and talk some smack with them too, I guess. 05:17.75 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Well, you get time to relax. I think when you have something like this and you have a couch and you have a TV and you have things that you can do you have a lot of time here where you sit around and you wait. And so having a place like this, just to give you a little insight, 28 years ago when I started, i only got paid $400 a week. And you drove in a car and you slept three to a room. One guy would sleep on the floor, the other two would have the beds. And you had to stand outside. You didn't have anywhere where you had food, you're outside in the environment if it's raining you try to find somewhere to get under just so you didn't get wet and so it's really changed over the last you know decade here of how much now we're getting taken care of thanks to people like Levelwear stepping up and doing something like this for us eight nine ten times a year. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast I Love this and I do love the fact that Levelwear is walking that walk not just talking the talk here with their "Who's With You" campaign. This is this physical manifestation of just that. So I want to hear some stats because guys come in here. You have the physiotherapy table here, guys can get get a massage and a rub down so for the average golf fan and viewer on TV, it's really hard to understand the vertical undulation of some of these courses. Everybody talks about the Masters. I guess where were you at the Memorial last week? So why don't you give us some insight here? Not only how many steps do you walk, how heavy is the bag and and how much vertical, how many steps, the equivalent of how many flights of stairs do you do four times from Thursday till Sunday afternoon? 07:04.76 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie I would say most of us do over 18,000 steps a day. And we do anywhere from 30 to 60 flights of stairs out there on the golf course. The toughest thing, it's not so much the going up. It's the side angles that you're walking in some of the areas that you're walking are very uneven. So you have to be careful. You don't want to hurt yourself. And then when the bags weighing 42 pounds. And there's just a lot more than just caddying. Carrying the bag is a very, very small, minute part of this. We got to stay in shape, and that's that's one of the reasons why it's nice to have have something like this that Levelwear does for us to get regenerated again and be ready to go when our player calls. 08:01.56 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Absolutely. So when I have entrepreneurs and founders of businesses on, I always want to know that aha moment, the backstory. So I want you to share with us that very first golf tournament, that bag that you were on. What was that tournament and how did that come about? How did how did you become caddie in the first place? Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So in 1998, I was the best player not on the PGA Tour at the course I was at. I played with Jim Thorpe, Donnie Hammond, Fulton Allum, Chris DeMarco, some of the best players back then. And Chris DeMarco's parents came up to me and their son was getting ready to lose his card. He was playing bad and asked if I would go help him because I was the best player. And I was like, you know what? Not a bad idea. Let me go see how it is. And so my first tournament was Greensboro, North Carolina. And so I got in a car, drove up there, couldn't find a place to stay, didn't know what to do. Talked to a caddie. Caddie said, you can sleep on the floor. I said, okay. So I slept on the floor of the first week, got to the golf course. They had rain there for two straight weeks, never cut the rough. 09:15.22 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie I said, oh, my God, I'm never going to make the PGA Tour. This rough is so long. So to make a long story short, they had to have somebody every 10 feet to find the golf ball. That's how deep the rough was. And if he got in the rough, he just had to pitch out sideways. So that was my first tournament on the PGA Tour. To make a long story short. He kept his card. The next year, he made over $700,000, which was top 20 on the money list. And then I decided to quit and go back and play again because I had plenty of money finally to play. 09:50.62 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Love that. Love that. So speaking of money, you don't need to share what type of a deal you've got with Mr. Tom Hoge, but I'm curious here, just speak in general. Most people listening, I do not know the full answer this, but as far as you making a living here, so tell us about that. How does it work with you? It's all performance-based, I bet, and it's a percentage of that. So why don't you tell us what you can are willing to share with that? 10:16.45 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie it's really tough because you're really betting on that player, making the cut and playing well. They pay you a base salary and let's just make a number. This is not even close to my number. Let's say it's $1,800 a week. You have to pay all your expenses. So you got to pay all your expenses yourself. So you got to keep your hotel down, your car, your airfare. And then once you get all that, let's say you've already used all your $1,800 up and he misses a cut, you make no money for the week. The only way you make money by keeping your expenses down and him making the cut when he makes a cut, then you make money. 10:58.74 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie And so you're really taking a big risk every week that that player is going to play well. And he wakes up in the morning on Thursday and hope he doesn't have a kink in his neck or, he's got a stomach problems or something. So it's real important for us to be ready to go and hope that he is too. 11:18.62 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Got it. And over the years, I've seen some caddies wearing the same hat from the sponsor as the player. And if that's the case, did they get some kind of a small cut of the sponsorship pie on that? 11:30.26 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So they do. And so what the bigger time players normally have a deal with the company that the players with. Now, the other caddies that don't have those deals, they have a Valspar deal out here that you get a point for every time you play. And if you make the cut, you get another point. And those points add up to how much they get paid. Tim West has run that and he's raised the money up now these guys are making decent money wearing a hat which is nice because at the end of the day the PGA Tour isn't giving us anything for retirement they're really not helping us this that much and so we have to look out for ourselves and we have to put away money for retirement we got to make sure we do the right things. And so that's what we have to do. And so we hope our player plays well so we can put more away. 12:26.71 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Well, seems what Levelwear is doing with the Caddie Lounge, this obviously isn't going to make a life-altering difference, but it's just one extra positive piece here that you're helping to make happen. And I think that's fantastic, but what you're doing here, Don. So, okay, the couple minutes I have of you, I want you to actually pick your brain of the thousands and thousands of stories you have that we spend hours sharing here. So, one I want you to share if you can think about it quickly, or maybe it's more than one, the proudest moment you've felt out there on the golf course, maybe it's a decision that you made. What are some of the proudest moments you've had over your caddying career? 13:05.46 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So I'll tell you ah pretty cool story. See, it was 2010, it was 16 years ago. I got a call from Webb Simpson last tournament of the year Greensboro. He had to finish top 10 to keep his card. And Thursday morning came. I get a phone call from him. He said, where's the bag? And I said, oh, it's just down underneath the cart barn area. I said, I'll be there in about 30 minutes. He goes, we tee off in like an hour. And I go, no, you're kidding me. He goes, no. I had looked at the time wrong. He goes, don't worry. He said, just get here and I'll be on the range hitting balls. And we're going to shoot 66. 13:54.84 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So I get there, everybody's giving me a crap. It's my first day working for this guy. First week, shoot 66 the first round. And to make a long story short, the last round of the tournament, we had four holes to play, and I changed his read on two reads coming in, and he made both putts and shots 63 to keep his card on the PGA Tour and to make that story even shorter the next 10 or 12 years, he made over $30 million dollars with Paul DeSori on his bag. So it saved his career, but it also kind of launched his career. And propelled him forward. held him forward. And he remembers that day. He says, some of the greatest reads for me to change it in that circumstance, knowing where he what he needed to do. He finished fourth in the tournament. So that was pretty cool. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast That's amazing. Now, I'm sure on the other end of the spectrum, you've got many stories that are maybe a little bit embarrassing or things that you wish you could redo on or maybe are just laughable. So why don't you share a funny, if not self-deprecating story of something that you don't have to name names of who it was with, but I'll leave that to you. 15:05.56 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Well, I was working for a player for like four and a half years and we were playing it in a tournament and he hit a shot on the first, first hole. And I guess he thought it was the wrong club. And he said, that's oh for one. We get to the second hole. I tell him he needs to hit it all the way to the hole. He doesn't hit it all the way the hole. He lands it short, spins off the green. He goes, oh for two. He goes, you could be the worst caddie I've ever had in my life. We get to three. I tell him he's got a flyer lie. He doesn't believe me. Flies the green. He goes, oh for three. You have got to be the worst caddy I've ever had. We get to number the fourth hole. I tell him 160 yards. He wants to hit a pitching wedge. I said it's a perfect nine iron. 15:50.71 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie He hits nine iron, and he pull hooks it in the bunker. he goes, that's why I wanted to hit pitching wedge so I could take that bunker out of play on the left. I set the bag down, took my bib off, started walking in. I said, I quit. He started running after me. Please, please, I promise I won't do that anymore. I won't yell at you. I said, get somebody else to caddy for you. Guess what? No one's watching you. And he started chasing after me again. And I said, all right, I'll come caddie for you. But I said, I got one thing you need to do. 16:21.82 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie I don't want you to say a darn word to me. I want you to listen to me. I don't want to hear a word out of you. Make a long story short, he shot 66 the first round. So that's pretty cool. He just threw me under the bus. I wanted to quit. Then he dragged me back. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast What a roller coaster ride that is! How about off the course? Has anybody in any situations where clubs get lost and they're on the plane, are there any stories there? Why don't you share a story or two that's hopefully safe for work here that you could share that's a funny story off the course? 16:57.91 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie That's an interesting one because I've been pretty lucky off the course. I haven't had any issues. We don't take our players' clubs very often. They normally take them, there's also a guy out here that takes the clubs and travels from tournament to tournament and drops them off. I don't have any off-course stories for them. 17:20.47 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast There we go. Well, maybe after this week, you'll have one after you finish with Tom. I'll have to circle back and ask you again here. So hey, to finish up, I wanted to ask you about because you've been out here, like you said, 28 years and counting here. I haven't had a chance to see the faces of everybody downstairs with the caddies. As far as new caddies, what's the average age and how long do guys stick around? Is there a lot of churn here? Do guys maybe do it for a year or two and get burnt out or move on? And so tell us about that. And the second part of that question, how do new guys come up? People that are interested, maybe are good golfers and maybe want to look at caddying? How does that even work? Maybe explain that to us too. How do guys get into becoming a professional caddy? 18:03.45 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Yeah, so the caddies out here, the age has gone down big time. 28 years ago, you would line up outside and a guy would just walk up and he'd pick you. Now you have to go through agents. Somebody that knows somebody and they help you out. A lot of friends are coming out here and caddying. But the age is definitely coming down. I'm probably one of the oldest caddies out here at 57 years old. Fluff doesn't caddie out here anymore. And there's still a couple more that are older than, ah older than me. A lot of these guys were ah great college players. 18:52.38 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie I think that helps tremendously. A lot of these caddies started on the Korn Ferry Tour and worked their way up here. Some of them were lucky like me and knew somebody, and i was able to caddy one time, and then they noticed that I was a good caddy, and that's happened. And then the turnover is really tough. Normally what happens is you'd see a lot of these guys come up from the Korn Ferry Tour with these caddies and you'll see almost 85% of those caddies never make it. And they pick up a veteran caddy that's already been out here because it's so important to know the golf courses out here. If I went out with a rookie on the tour and I've helped a bunch of rookies. Being prepared and preparing is really hard when you're only going to get to see the golf course one time. But if you have somebody that has been there 30 times or 25 times, I know exactly where we need to leave every single golf ball and and where and what to expect every single week that we get to a golf tournament. 19:58.49 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So that's really important. And that's what some of these younger caddies start realizing as they start going, some of these caddies that haven't been there can only help them so much because they really need that little extra help on the course to know the golf course better or what to what to expect here. Have you ever seen the wind like this? Yes, this fairway runs out more or this greens firmer. Got it, got it. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Really curious to what you just said there. It makes me want to ask this question. And that is,, first of all, is this the first year or second year you've caddied here at Osprey Valley here at TBC Toronto. So let me ask with last year and also this year, without giving away all your your trade secrets and secret sauce here, Don, but how do you go about with yourself and then also with Tom, how do you prepare on the Tuesday and the Wednesday today leading up to tee-off tomorrow? So what do you do with the golf course to prepare based on last year and the knowledge you have there? Give us some insights there, what you do. 21:03.93 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie So last year was the first year and the first day we got here, it was really, really firm. And then they had a really bad storm come in and it really softened the course up and it made this course a lot easier for the guys that hit it really long. If this golf course stays firm, the longer hitters are going to really struggle because you're gonna have to take more of the corners of the dog legs on to keep it from going into the rough on the other side. And so preparing is getting good lines off the tee, making sure my player knows that we need to um hit our balls in certain sections. I got a lot of runoffs to go down in the water and a lot of little tough little iron shots that you have to control your spin and stuff like that. So trying to get my player to know where the pins are, 21:54.71 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Because last year they were there and they're going to be close to the same place and where he needs to leave the golf balls and where the best place to putt from. And if you can do that, he's going to have the best opportunity to play well. 22:05.98 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Got it. Got it. So during a practice round, will you do some situational type of shots where around the green, will you drop balls at certain places and then play shots from there, like multiple shots? Is that something that you do? 22:18.01 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Yeah. So we'll chip from certain areas that I would like him to leave the golf ball and vice versa. I'll ask him to hit a few putts to certain areas just in case he doesn't get it back where he has to go over humps and down where it has a speed issue. and he pretty much does it because I've seen shots already on this golf course and this is his first time here. And so I think he's going to lean on me a little bit more this week because He only saw nine holes yesterday, and he saw the Pro-Am today nine holes. And so it's really hard to know exactly what you need to do, only seeing the golf course for 18 holes. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Right, right. And you've been on the bag of so many professional players. I'm curious with this, just like all professional athletes, whether it's the NBA or major league baseball, every player has their strengths and their weaknesses. Do you approach or cater the way that you caddy and make decisions playing to their strengths and maybe trying to avoid their weaknesses and knowing that, is that even a thing? 23:19.93 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie I don't think you do. Obviously, if you're not as good a chipper, you might actually have the guy make sure he hits in the middle of the green and don't go at the flag, obviously. But I think the biggest thing with these players is making them confident that they they're like six iron, perfect club. Because a lot of mistakes that these guys make, it's not just not because they're good. It's because they're uncertain. Certainty out here is very important. And so I read a lot of putts for my players. So me being on reading greens and getting him to trust what I'm seeing because he might see a little different is what we're challenging right now. 24:11.57 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast Right. Right. Do you find sometimes depends on the player that you have as your boss, do you find that sometimes you're part therapist, part psychoanalyst that maybe sometimes it's best to say absolutely nothing or that's what they want and other times they want you to talk or different players want different things. I'm assuming that's that's something you have to have to approach and cater and customize do to each each player. 24:35.45 Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Yeah, different characteristics for each person you work for, but if you're with some, as much as we're with these people, we're with these with these players more than we're with our families. And i know how he ticks. I can sense that something's not right, and sometimes I'll talk to him to get him to just kind of settle down, and sometimes I won't say anything because I want him to just get it over it himself and see how long it takes him to get over it. Ans so it's very, very important when to speak and when not to, because you can really tap the bear a little bit too much. If you talk too much or say something at the wrong time. So it's a very fragile thing with these guys. Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast And I'm sure almost three decades of doing this as professional, you've learned when to speak and when to shut the heck up. Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Yes. Over time. Yes. 25:32.56 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast That's something you have over the young guys here out here. Well, hey, why don't Don, why don't we wrap it up there? Thank you so much for the time today. Like i said, in the Caddie Lounge, I will include on our ModGolf YouTube channel and also our social media channels with some short videos. I'm doing some walk-arounds here of what the Caddie Lounge looks like. It's absolutely amazing what you have here for yourself and all the other caddies and the support that, again, ties into Levelwear's "Who's With You?" campaign and love what you're doing. And Don, I want to thank you for spending the time on ModGolf today. This has been a great conversation. Thanks so much. Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Yeah, and thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. And to the viewers out there and to the people that are listening to this, you need to see this Caddie Lounge. It's pretty incredible. It really is. 26:12.25 Colin Weston - The ModGolf Podcast There we go. Well, all the best of luck this week, yourself and also with Tom. Hopefully we'll see you doing something magical on Sunday afternoon. Love it. Thanks so much, Don. Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie Thanks Colin. 26:24.52 The ModGolf Podcast Thank you sir! Don Donatello - PGA Tour caddie You're welcome. That was awesome.