CARL JACKSON SAYS SO

Caddie-player relationships at the Masters were forever changed forty years ago, after a hard rain. And after some of the game's greatest golfers yearned to bag one of Augusta's oldest traditions. How do we know this to be true? Because...

- JOSH SENS

ASIDE FROM BEING one of the game’s most fabled playgrounds, Augusta National Golf Club is a well-groomed workplace, where people punch the clock and earn their keep. Take Carl Jackson as a case in point. The second of nine children, born and raised in Augusta, Jackson started caddying at Augusta National in 1960, when he was 13, and worked his first Masters the following spring. He kept up that tradition for more than half a century, going on to set the record for most appearances by a caddie—54—in the event.

To fans, Jackson is best known as the man on the bag for Ben Crenshaw’s two Masters wins, in 1984 and 1995. But he is also a living connection to an era when every competitor at Augusta had a club caddie at his side. That was the rule, implemented at the inaugural Masters, in 1934, and upheld until 1983, when players were first permitted to bring their own loopers. Most did.

By that time, Jackson had moved to Arkansas, where he still resides and, at age 76, works as caddie master at the Alotian Golf Club, a private retreat founded by his longtime employer and former Augusta National chairman, Jack Stephens. On the 40th anniversary of the caddie policy shift at the Masters, we asked Jackson about his early memories of Augusta, his connection with Crenshaw and his sense of what has—and hasn’t—changed since that watershed tournament in 1983.