Lorcan Morris is not your average caddie, and when he’s not forming a formidable partnership with Tim O’Neal on the PGA Tour Champions circuit, the Dubliner serves as a volunteer firefighter in his adopted home in North Carolina.
£500 goes a long way, at least it did when you were a 12-year-old in 1994. That would’ve bought a lot of bonbons and cola cubes, and that’s what Lorcan Morris got paid the first time he hoisted a golf bag on his shoulder and caddied.
His first payday was a big one, and it was love at first sight for the youth, as it set him on a career path that has taken him all over the globe in the 32 years that followed.
Morris’ first caddying job was eight holes one evening at St Margaret’s Golf Club, and his employer was none other than Laura Davies – the number one ranked women’s golfer in the world – who invited him to loop while he was clearing rubbish at the 11th tee box with the boy scouts.
“I was changing the bin on the 11th hole, and she came over the hill,” Morris recalls over three decades later. “I said to my scout master, ‘let me watch this lady hit a ball’. I was 12 years of age, and Laura was world number one at the time, yet here she was, Tuesday evening at St Margaret’s with nobody else out there.
“She turned around and asked me how I was doing, and I could barely even speak to her because I was such a super, mega fan of hers at the time. She was huge.
“I got talking to her, and she told me that she needed a caddie for the last eight holes. She paid me £500 which was loads and loads of money in 1994. You could buy a whole set of golf clubs for £500 in 1994. So, that was my first experience, and that was definitely a light-bulb moment that set me thinking that it wasn’t a bad backup if pro golf didn’t work out.
“Laura is so down to earth and so normal. I mean, it is amazing that the relationship still exists. She’s had so much success; she’s in the World Golf Hall of Fame, and now she’s Dame Laura Davies. But she is so grounded, she never ever forgot where she came from, and she’s been a huge influence on my career. I wouldn’t be sitting here right now if I hadn’t meet Laura Davies when I was 12 years of age.”
Morris did enjoy a fairly distinguished career as a professional – winning eight times on mini tours – and as a caddie with a CV that includes Sydnee Michaels, Michelle Wie, Robert Garrigus, and now Tim O’Neal as employers since returning to the profession Davies gave him his first taste of in 2009.
The story of O’Neal is an amazing one. The 53-year-old never made it on to the PGA Tour, missing out on a card by one shot on two occasions, but he clinched a life changing win for both him and Morris at the 2024 Dominion Energy Charity Classic, just months after Morris had picked up his bag.
“In 2024, Tim was looking for a caddie. I knew about Tim’s career. I knew his potential. I knew what good shape he was in physically,” explains Morris who plays at Royal Dublin when home. “We’ve had a really, really good run. We won a Schwab Cup playoff event, which was a massive win for Tim at the time, and changed both of our lives significantly.
“It’s been incredible; they’ve done away with the Q school out here, so stories like his are going to be very limited going forward. You’re not going to get a Steven Alker [a journeyman pro for most of his career but now one of the leading players on the PGA Tour Champions] and you’re not going to get many Tim O’Neal’s going forward either, because they want to get more PGA Tour guys in. I mean, it’s in the title, ‘PGA Tour Champions’ – guys who have won on the PGA Tour. We got in at the right time and thankfully, both of us have taken advantage of it. I said that that win changed everything for both of us, it was unbelievable. I still wake up every day and think about it.
“Before we won, we were on the fringes, and sometimes we wouldn’t be in until the last minute. Like, late on Thursday, we’d be three out, and then at close of entries on Friday, he’d call me and be like, ‘hey, we’re in next week.’
“This tour… You’re pretty much set up if you’re fully exempt, and if you don’t stay fully exempt out here, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. I mean, we’ve got 28 opportunities – 23 of those without a cut – so at some point you figure we’re going to play well, get hot and make enough to stay in. So, from the schedule setting perspective, getting that win was huge.”
Morris was a talented player himself, earning a scholarship to Wingate University in North Carolina, studying broadcast journalism from 2001 to 2006, and quickly surging up the amateur ranks in the United States.
He then moved into the professional ranks, winning eight times on mini tours between 2006 and 2009, but the financial crash put the squeeze on just about everybody and while mini tour golf allowed him to keep chasing his dream, there was no financial security in it, and his mind drifted back to that Tuesday evening at St Margaret’s.
That had always been his backup dream, and his friendship with Davies, which they’d retained from that initial encounter, proved crucial. Determined not to return to Ireland with his tail between his legs, Davies helped him sort out a caddying gig, and he began working with Colombian Marissa Baena at the end of the 2009 LPGA Tour season.
“I played amateur golf in Ireland with very limited success and just very quickly adapted to the US system,” he recalls.
“I got very good, very quickly, probably due to great weather, great coaching, and great facilities, and within a couple of years, I was ranked in the NCAA. I made it to the NCAA finals in 2005, turned professional in 2006, and then won eight times between 2006 and 2009.
“I got an opportunity midway through 2009 to caddie on the LPGA Tour, and I took it.”
The stint with Baena was short-lived as she retired shortly afterwards, but once he was back in the caddying game, he was determined to stick it out and over the next few years, he served time on the LPGA and PGA Tours, working for Len Mattice, Robert Damron, Sydnee Michaels, and even Michelle Wie, one of the most recognisable names on the women’s circuit at the time.
In 2016, with the arrival of a second child imminent and the additional pressures that it brought, he decided to give up life on tour and, inspired by his brother who is a fireman back home, joined the local firefighting academy in North Carolina and graduated number one in his class.
But the golf course was always calling, and though he was now putting out fires full-time in his adopted hometown, when a phone call from Ryan Brehm offering him the chance to get back out on tour arrived, he couldn’t resist.
He still puts out fires, but now on a part-time basis with the Shanghai Volunteer Fire Service in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and on a more regular basis with O’Neal on the senior circuit.
The PGA Tour Champions is often referred to as a more relaxed environment than the ruthlessness of the PGA Tour, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some serious talent out there.
Pádraig Harrington feels there is a sweet spot between early-to-mid-fifties when you can be prolific. Bernhard Langer is the obvious exception, as is Stephen Ames (61). Ames has nine Champions Tour wins, with eight of them coming between 2021 and 2024. Morris has also been left starstruck by 72-year-old Jay Haas, who can still shoot mid-60s at tour level.
The Dubliner puts this down to the change in attitudes towards fitness among professional golfers.
“It’s all about mindset, and you really have to take care of yourself. Thirty, forty years ago, these guys were not in the gym. If you look at any of the old pictures of Palmer and Nicklaus, they have cigarettes in their hands, and they’re hanging out and they’re just having a good time,” he recalls.
“That’s changed even on this tour. We have $2 million trucks that travel with us each week that are set up in the parking lot with workout equipment and certified trainers in each truck. Guys are traveling now with their own trainers. Guys are traveling with their own chiropractors; even from my own caddie’s standpoint, I am in the gym at 5am before a 7am Pro-Am.”
So, what is life like as a caddie on the Champions Tour? Morris does more than just the regular five hours of carrying a bag on his back. He still manages Sydnee Michaels’ career and does the same for O’Neal.
“You have to be ready at all times for anything, to get any kind of text. ‘Hey, call this guy and tell him that I am supposed to meet him at 10 o’clock for this or that and I can’t make it’; ‘call this golf course and see if we can get out there to practice and go out and hit some balls’; ‘hey, can you have a look at flights for Morocco in eight weeks’ time?’”
In their two seasons together, Morris and O’Neal have struck up an excellent relationship. But that doesn’t mean he is guaranteed to still have a job by the publication date of this article. He can never rest on his laurels. Job security and caddies don’t go hand in hand.
“No, there’s no security at all. I mean, you just give it your best every single day and hope that it’s enough at the end of the week. And there’s absolutely no security in this job outside of [Harrington’s caddie] Ronan Flood!
“I’m not planning on going anywhere with Tim, and as far as I know, he’s not going anywhere either. But like I said, that can change. That can change on a dime, but I just hope it doesn’t.”
The money isn’t bad on the Champions tour. Players compete for $51.5 million over 26 tournaments, with a record average purse of $1.98 million per event this season. The cookie jar might get larger if a certain 50-year-old named Woods tees it up on a consistent basis.
Tiger needs the US Senior Open to complete the set of USGA events and Morris expects to see the 15-time major winner on the senior circuit this year.
“I think that he’ll play if he’s healthy. I think that he’ll start at the Insperity next month in Houston because he’s signed a big endorsement deal with them. So, it would make sense that that would be his Champions Tour debut. I sure hope he plays. Everybody hopes he plays. And if you’re in this game in 2026 and we’re making the money that we are, you need to walk up to him and you need to shake his hand and say, ‘thanks very much for changing my life’, because if it wasn’t for him, there’s no telling where golf would be.”
Indeed, Morris has been shoulder to shoulder with Tiger at a PGA Tour event before. Inside the ropes, packed galleries, huge roars, and Tiger… It’s where you want to be.
Although Tiger is a hugely intimidating figure, Morris mustered up the courage to break the ice with a well-timed gag!
“I caddied in a group with him in February of 2020, right before the pandemic at Torrey Pines on the Saturday. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and probably like nothing I’ll ever see again. It was 20 deep on both sides of the hole all day long.
“I’d tried to figure out a way to walk onto that first tee and break the ice, because I didn’t want to be nervous all day. So, I walked straight up to him, shook his hand, and I said, ‘Tiger, can you believe how many people have come out here to watch me caddie today’? He just started laughing so hard, he was belly laughing, and it was great. It was awesome.
“He’s not very tall or big physically, but he has an aura of invincibility.”
The life of a caddie can be a futile one. Low job security, you never get credit for a good shot, but you get blamed for a bad one. If a golfer collapses under pressure, media scrutiny often jumps to the guy carrying the clubs rather than the player hitting the shots.
Rory McIlroy has had to leap to the defence of Harry Diamond numerous times over the years while others have weighed in behind to support the duo. McIlroy’s grand slam clinching victory at the Masters 12 months ago was not only a history-making, career-defining moment for him, it was also vindication for Diamond, who claimed his first major since taking McIlroy’s bag in 2017.
Morris always felt that criticism of Diamond was over the line and he was as delighted as anyone on that famous Sunday in April.
“I’m so happy for those two. I have known Harry for years,” he says. “Harry and I played college golf together in North Carolina. Harry represented Ireland. He’s a scratch amateur. He won the West of Ireland. He’s not a slouch. He’s not just his friend from a housing estate. Harry is an established player, and he’s now established himself as one of the best golf caddies in the world.
“He’s doing exactly what Rory wants him to do, I guarantee you that. Rory wants to make his own decisions, which is great to be that talented and be able to do that. So, Harry doesn’t give him the input, because Rory doesn’t want it.
“I think it’s fantastic that they’ve achieved what they have together, and long may it continue for both of them.
“I just think the world of both of them.”
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