Caddie's Role: It was 6.20 Wednesday morning last, the night was slowly yielding to day as I set the angle for the car parking position in the alternative caddie parking lot at Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra, beach near Jacksonville, Florida. I had been instructed to be ready for action for 6.30am by my boss the previous night. It's top security at the Players Championship, the fifth major as they like it to be known, the security guards are not waiting for dawn to check passes, they are vigilant 24 hours a day.

I interrupted the volunteers at the caddie shack below the clubhouse as they were setting up breakfast for us. The New York Times had already been delivered and the weather channel was painting a grim picture of the early morning.

As some other early morning cads started to roll into the lounge, a tour official wandered in bearing the all too familiar information of "weather delay". The sun rises at 6.30, that's usually Tiger's tee-off time. We were informed that the range would not be open till seven o'clock and the first and 10th tees at 7.30.

So Retief interrupted me from my Danish pastry, coffee and newspaper to drag me out to the first tee at 7.15 to try to beat the 7.30 rush. There wasn't even a marshal on the tee when we got there. One arrived soon after as Goosen did a make-shift warm-up by swinging a couple of clubs. The marshal arrived with the obligatory, "I want to say something to the pro comment".

At 7.23 some spectators started to assemble around the tee. At 7.24 Tiger arrived through the grandstand tunnel. He is traditionally the first to tee off in a practice round and he was surprised to see Retief ahead of him. Are you going to go, his caddie Steve asked, to which Retief, who has had a bad run with tour rules lately, replied that we could not go till 7.30.

Tiger flushed a three-wood down the first fairway and Goosen followed with a flushed drive, and so we wandered off the tee for our first practice round with Tiger. As we approached the fairway I had a sudden realisation of what this meant.

Today was "caddie shot at the 17th" day. It was the traditional annual caddie shot day at Sawgrass, when the caddies get a chance at hitting it closest to the pin for a wad of dollars that the players put in a jar beside the tee.

This meant that I was going to have to not only hit a shot in front of all the people that follow Tiger, but also the great man. Is there any chance that Retief might only want to play nine?

Maybe Tiger will want to go on and play by himself ? The electronic board by the second green flashed a weather warning sign. My prayers had been answered, and so soon. We were going to have to go in and I was not going to have to hit a scank off the 17th tee in front of the most famous golfer in the world.

But the sign was not correct, the clouds lifted, there was not a rumble of thunder and we were getting closer to the 17th. The world's number two and five were getting along nicely in their impromptu practice round. Tiger was seeing a side of Retief that he does not show when he is playing a competitive round.

There is a rule on the US Tour that players can not tee-off the 10th tee (as their first hole) after 8.30. Of course when we got to the 10th tee after an uninterrupted front nine two players were on the fairway, obviously not paying much attention to the 10th-tee rule. So we got to wait for every shot on the back nine.

I got to prolonging my agony just a little longer. There must have been well over a thousand people around as we approached the 16th green.

I was nervous, but the fact that Tiger is actually so personable and casual to play a practice round with managed to calm my twitching right hand as I started to tee the ball up on the 17th tee. It all happened very quickly, I had decided not to go through too many pre-shot preambles.

Retief suggested using his eight-iron. At 132 yards to the pin and the wind straight off the right, it may have sounded like too much club. Given that you could build your house on the shafts that my boss plays with, distance is irrelevant. I took a swipe at the well teed-up ball, made contact somewhere off the bottom groove, close to the hosel, and watched the ball float limply in the direction of the flag but just short of the green and into the water. The shot wasn't good enough to get an applause and not bad enough to get a giggle. In short it was nondescript, which suited me just fine.

Chris Jones, who caddies for Kevin Na, hit his shot to one and a half feet and took the loot. The prize was limited to $1,000 and a watch. The remainder of the pot was matched by the tour and donated to the ALS charity (some $10,000 in all), "Driving for Life".

We spent the rest of the week in the environs of the clubhouse waiting patiently to play the Players Championship. In fact, by the time you have read this, the chances are we will still be trying to finish the longest event at which I have ever caddied.