By Peter Owen
HE’S probably the best-known and most popular caddie in the golf world. And if you think Mike ‘Fluff’ Cowan has been around forever, you’re not far off the mark.
Cowan, with his trademark bushy white moustache and hippety-hop gait, has been lugging the heavy bags of some of the world’s best golfers for a half century. And at 76, the veteran caddie has no plans to quit anytime soon.
He’s just ended a 25-year partnership with veteran Jim Furyk and agreed to carry the bag of promising young Taiwanese pro C.T. Pan for the rest of the year, or as long as his aching back allows.
Why does he continue to stride the world’s fairways at an age way when his contemporaries have long since passed into retirement?
“Doing what you love,” Cowan said. “Money is a wonderful sidelight, but money is not what makes you happy. You have to do things that you enjoy and let the bad times roll off your back and just continue to continue.”
Furyk, whose recent appearances on the PGA Tour Champions have been restricted through injury, speaks highly of the man who began his career as a caddie with Ed Sabo in 1976.
Mike ‘Fluff’ Cowan caddied for a young Tiger Woods.
“He’s just a dear friend,” Furyk said. “I love a lot of things about Mike, but what I really appreciate is how he’s able to hop in and out of different relationships.
“He’s always going to be a friend and now it’s become where I feel like he’s a friend first, but when we get out there on the golf course and he’s carrying the bag and we’re working, he kind of has to play a different role.
“He’s out here at 76. I think he just really enjoys what he does,” Furyk said. “He shows up for work because he loves being a caddie, he loves being with the boys on the wall whether it’s smoking a cigarette, hanging out and talking about the day, or carrying the bag and working.”
Cowan has also caddied for Peter Jacobsen (1978-1996), Tiger Woods (1996-1999) and for 13-year-old Michelle Wie for one tournament back in 2003. He’s also carried the bag of four different golfers – Jacobsen, Woods, Furyk and Fred Couples – in 11 Ryder Cups.
His public profile reached its peak when he partnered with emerging superstar Woods as his first PGA Tour caddie. Their first tournament together was Woods’ professional debut at the Greater Milwaukee Open in September 1996.
Cowan was also on Woods’ bag for his first major title at the Masters in 1997, their only major victory working together.
The partnership came to an end in February 1999 when Woods sacked his caddie, reportedly because of a magazine interview in which Cowan publicly revealed his salary – $1000 a week and bonuses up to 10 percent of Woods’ winnings.
Though he shuffles around the course these days and seems to struggle with the weight of the 23kg bag on his back, Cowan was once a multi-sport athlete who played on the golf team at William Penn College in Iowa, and once dabbled with the notion of playing golf professionally.
He was an assistant pro at a country club in Maine prior to becoming a caddie, and was inducted in the Maine Golf Hall of Fame in 2005. He’s a member of Congressional Country Club in Maryland and lives with wife Jennifer and daughter Bobbie at nearby Rockville.
Cowan also struck up a long and successful partnership with American Jim Furyk.
Cowan’s been called ‘Fluff’ for most of his career, the moniker coming from a pair of caddie mates who thought he looked like former pro golfer and broadcaster Steve Melynk, who also bore the nickname ‘Fluff’.
“They started calling me Short Fluff, and pretty soon it was shortened to Fluff,” Cowan recalls. “I have no idea why they started calling me that. I think they were trying to get my goat because Steve Melnyk isn’t exactly the most handsome man.”
Golf’s been good to Cowan, though he didn’t consider it as a career in those early days. “I’ve never planned anything in my life,” he said. “I’ve always gone with the flow.
“Making a living was not even part of the equation. My first bag was $20 a day and 3 percent. A bunch of us would share a room, low round of the day would get the bed, and the rest of us would make do.
“If you had a good week, you partied hard; if you didn’t, you got by. It wasn’t like we were out there saving money.”
And when will he eventually retire? “My daughter is in high school now,” he said. “She’s got three more years so I’d like to go at least that long.
“If you saw me after the round getting out of my car at the hotel, you’d say how the hell is he going to caddie tomorrow? But somehow or other I get out here and I put one foot in front of another.
“How many more years? Just imagine if I can make it to 80; then I can be really crotchety.”
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