Big Country made sure I played practice rounds with Zach Johnson.

Some strategic things about where you can miss have been helpful.

The amount of time he spends walking the course. He spends more time there than any other course.

That was Nipper in 1961 when I beat Palmer to win my first green jacket. On the fourth hole, I had a six-footer for par. He said right lip and I thought left lip. We conversed and Nipper said if it’s not right you don’t have to pay me. So, I hit it right lip and it went in. We went on to win. 

My caddie (Brennan Little) was on the bag for Mike Weir when he won and has a lot of notes from over the years. 

At the start, understanding where Rae’s Creek is and marking my book. It really helped me when I holed a putt at 17 in 2011. If I would’ve hit it (any) harder, it would’ve gone through the break and I miss that putt.

Confirming the wind direction can be huge.

He’s watched the broadcast and say, for instance, on the second hole it’s OK to miss in the right bunker, everyone’s getting it up and down from there. 

All the homework Billy (Foster) does it makes a difference.

My first year, a local caddie named Blue pulled me aside and showed me the direction and influence of Rae’s Creek. Now the yardage book has red dots that indicates the direction of Rae’s Creek on each green but before that someone had to let you know.

Kept his mouth shut! No, doing a wind map. There’s a general swirling of the wind there. Invariably it’s going to blow multiple directions during the tournament and if you know what your hole is in relation to that wind is really key. (Jeff) Squeaky (Medlin) and I started doing that in the early 1990s.

Joe (Skovron) and I did a great job in 2018 of keeping the pace and not getting too fast ahead of ourselves. The way we managed the back nine and finishing stretch was special.  

There’s a sprinkler on nine and one of the local caddies gave us some local intel. If you go left of the fairway, there’s a huge angle and the yardage changes so much. He showed me how to measure it. We were within five yards of that sprinkler on two days and we hit it close both times and birdied it at least once.

When it rains, like it did last year, I need him to have like eight hands.

Watching coverage. It’s the best of any tournament. You can see every shot. Being able to see how conditions are playing 2-3 hours before your tee time and have him say, for example, I saw a guy do this from here at this hole, that can be helpful.

One time, I was playing with my former caddie, Damon Green, and I had a local caddie on my bag. I had a putt on seven to the far-right pin and I had to putt it through the fringe to get within 4-5 feet and I knocked it stone dead. My (local) caddie said to me, “You got these greens.” That became a catchphrase for Damon and me.

It was either my second or third Masters. I sat kind of in the back of the caddie house with Carl. Ben (Crenshaw) had suggested that I just sit down with him for a few minutes. And, yeah, he gave me a yardage book that had some of the — I think he called it grain is, where some of the slopes are. And it’s just a yardage book that has some arrows in it. I’m not going to tell you where the arrows are pointing.

But it’s something that I’ll kind of review at night and I always look at it in the lead-up to the tournament just because there is kind of some weird stuff that goes on around the golf course.

But it was nice just being able to sit with him and hear his thoughts about this place. And, I mean, he’s such a peaceful guy. So it was really nice just kind of listening to him talk about the golf course.