The Beard, the Battery, and the Reverend - Who is Lucas Herbert's Caddy?
Lucas Herbert made international news with his outstanding play at the 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, including a blistering 62 in the final round (narrowly missing the record for lowest round ever in a major by missing a 5'3'' putt on 18).
But if you were watching closely, your eye kept drifting one step behind him. To the big fella with the white beard, the loud glasses, and the bag on his shoulder.
That's Nick Pugh. Pughy, to the caddy yard. And his week was the best story at Royal Birkdale that nobody put on the front page.
He tried to get into this tournament. He never made it.
Here's the part that ought to stop you cold.
Pugh grew up in Birkenhead, over on the Wirral — call it twenty miles from where Herbert was standing. He coached in England starting in 1993, then in 2010 he packed up and went to the Far East to see if he could actually play for a living. Five years on the Asian Development Tour. And along the way, he entered Final Qualifying for The Open a couple of times.
He never made the field. Never got his name in the 156.
Then on Friday, at the course down the road from where he was raised, he was inside the ropes for one of the lowest rounds in the history of men's major championship golf.
Every caddy reading this understands exactly what that walk felt like. Most of us came to the bag because the game wouldn't quite let us have it the other way. You don't stop loving it. You just find the other door in.
Pugh first got on Herbert's bag at the 2018 Australian PGA. They opened with an 80. Pugh has said it was still the most fun he'd ever had on a golf course. They shot 69 the next day and just missed the cut, and by early 2019 they were a team.
Six months after that, in Las Vegas, Herbert let him go.
Pugh didn't blow up about it. By his own telling, he told Lucas he was a great kid and a hell of a player, and asked him not to forget him. That's a caddie's answer. You carry the bag, you don't carry the grudge.
Herbert didn't forget him. Pugh came back, and last September he stood up as Reverend Nicholas Pugh — ordained for the occasion — and officiated Lucas and Erica's wedding.
There's your measure of the job, right there. The good ones don't work for a player. They belong to one.
The battery he took out of the rangefinder
Now, the part the internet lost its mind about.
On the 14th tee, the broadcast caught Pugh looking through a rangefinder. Distance devices are not permitted at The Open. Social media had Herbert penalized, disqualified and run out of Southport inside of four minutes.
Except Pugh had done his homework. There was no battery in the thing. Without power, it isn't a rangefinder — it's a monocular, and using it to find your player's ball is perfectly legal. He'd seen another caddie do it at the U.S. Open, and he went to an R&A official early in the week and asked permission before he ever put it in the bib. It went all the way up the chain. He got the green light.
That is world-class caddying, and it has nothing to do with reading putts.
While everyone else was guessing, Pugh read the rulebook, found a legal edge, and cleared it in advance so it could never cost his player a shot. Compare that to what happened to Bryson on the fifth hole that same day and tell me preparation doesn't win golf tournaments.
And then he kept his feet on the ground
After the 62, Pugh told reporters the other caddies were patting him on the back — and that he was still one wrong club away from being called an idiot again.
He wasn't being cute. At the 2019 Vic Open he gave Herbert a bad yardage and walked the next fairway with the golf bag over his head.
That's the whole job in one sentence. You are a genius on Friday and a fool on Saturday, and the only thing that keeps you steady between the two is the work you put in before anybody was watching.
Herbert didn't win the Claret Jug this week. Doesn't matter. The lesson holds.
Want to know what the caddies were telling their players this week at Royal Birkdale? Download the CaddyTips® from Royal Birkdale...
👉 https://www.caddytips.com/royal-birkdale-golf-course-tips
And download our free playbook on How To Play Links-style Golf Courses with insights from international caddies from our Caddy Collective.
👉 https://www.caddytips.com/links-golf-course-tips