GOLF/Interview with Colin Byrne: he's hunkered down trying to look as though he is here to contemplate the beauty of the place. In among the sand dunes and marram grass, the golf bag sits. His working tool. Leather and iron.

It is a crisp winters day for the photo-shoot, horse tails flicking up from the water on Dublin Bay, puddles of sun and shadows everywhere. Colin Byrne might be thinking of his next job away in Hawaii or Sun City, his next pay cheque, maybe the round he's just played at his home course, Royal Dublin. At the moment life is good.

A Labrador bounds into the shot. A lolling tongue and a big friendly gait, the dog sees bag, smells it, is drawn to it. The hind leg goes up. Ahh, isn't life good indeed. Byrne is laughing at the state of the bag. Did the clubs, his new TaylorMade irons, straight from the factory, get it too he wonders.

Byrne has, for no reason he can fathom, found himself on top of the caddie shack. Somehow the boy from Belvedere, who liked travelling, has found himself at the pinnacle. Somehow Retief Goosen figured Byrne was the right person to stand on the other side of his bag. Somehow, somehow, somehow is how the caddie tries to explain how he found a golden bag.

"Myself and Retief get on well," he says. "But again I'm always hesitant in saying that because I'm aware how quickly things can change. Someone loses form and you could be associated with that loss of form. Then it is why not try someone else. I've seen it happen and who wouldn't do it. We don't have contracts. The fact is that people can change caddies easily without breaking contracts and they will. It's human nature."

All of this fuss now is a stroll. Byrne's life is fuss. One of the best golfers in the world trusts he will fuss for him better than anyone else will fuss. For that Byrne needs to be meticulous. Luckily it's in his nature. He needs to be part loner. That too is in his makeup. "Yeah, I think they (caddies) are all like that, of that loner nature. The lure for many of them would be that semi-isolated maverick lifestyle," he says.

At the K Club this year people sought Byrne out for his autograph, Goosen taking quiet pleasure in the brief role reversal. Back in Dublin to promote his book Bagman, his collected observations of working inside the pro tour, Byrne's comfort comes from the way the path has twisted his way.

Caddying was firstly a means of travelling the world when he was young. A knockdown job that barely broke even most years. At 17 he hauled the bag of American Peter Teravainen around his home club in the 1982 Irish Open. In his first long summer the college kid went to Biarritz and hung out in the club car-park in the hope of a bag and there it began. David Feherty collared him in 1984. Terry Gale, Wayne Smith, Roger McKay, Scott Simpson, Roger Chapman, Greg Turner, they all followed. None would take him to Augusta.

Paul Lawrie, the then reigning British Open champion had Bryne carry his clubs in 1999 and he moved from the trough, so to speak, to the dinner table. A few months before this year's US Open, Goosen called. Goosen was another seismic shift upwards. Without forcing anything or canvassing for the job, almost seamlessly Byrne found himself, at 40, staring down the barrel of the final day at a major with an amiable South African. He felt comfortable.

"It was kinda hard at the beginning," says Byrne. "In the states Retief assumed I'd come back with him to his place at Nona Lake (Florida) on a Sunday night and leave with him on Tuesday morning. I wasn't used to that. I try to keep a balance. You get too close and it becomes difficult.

"Every player is different. Retief likes travelling with you. He likes being around people although he seems quiet and isolated to most people. He's not a back slapper but he does like having people around. Last week I ate with him four or five nights with his ex-caddie, a few other caddies, Garcia (Sergio). Paul Lawrie, I'd never dream of travelling with or eating out with him."

Perfect strike: they say the best way to be a good caddie is to get a good player. Byrne has no idea how that is done. None whatsoever. His idea was to settle down 14 years ago once he'd seen the world. He had it worked out at 26-years-old he would pack it in and try a job that made a profit each year. At 26, the student fairs would come to an end and his romance would be too expensive to prolong. He didn't. And no, he doesn't know why. He became a bag junkie.

"You are out there trying to squeeze it dry every week," he says. "Because you can go from the penthouse to the shit house in the space of a shot. I know down the line there will be a lot of weeks, months, years where it won't happen."

"Happen" means winning. Goosen has, as it were, laid the golden egg. For Goosen it happens, has happened. Three wins this year in the European Open, US Open and Tour Championship has sugared what was already a fine year's haul, one which has earned him a player ranking of fourth in the world. From 16 tour events, Goosen has won 5,332,833 in prize-money worldwide.

"I've never asked anyone about how much money they make. I think that's a personal thing and I wouldn't do it," says Byrne. "I gave an interview after Retief won the US Open and afterwards a headline appeared saying I'd won $110,000. What I earned was never discussed. I was never asked. I never told them. I mean I could have won $500,000 for all they knew. Guys have different deals. Five per cent to 10 per cent. That's kind of the yardstick.

"Obviously if he does well, then I do well. Subconsciously it could be in your mind. But I think once you get experience, you realise the last thing they (golfer) want to see is the caddie showing emotion out there. There is nothing worse than a caddie going 'oh my God' or doing something like that.

"Sure, for me this is as good as it gets. I absolutely consider myself very fortunate he just thought that I was someone who was suited to be on the other side of his bag. You can use any term you want. Humping a bag. That's how I see what I do. It's manual labour. The most amazing thing this year is how differently people look at me because I happened to be associated with someone who has been very successful. I don't feel any different."

Tour Of Duty: Byrne is not a sporting navvy. Brawn does not have him on Goosen's bag. He's a planner. Every Sunday in the US he leaves whatever tournament he is at and the next day he is walking the course for the following week's event. It's a savage lifestyle. But it's his way of making it work. Byrne points out if Goosen plays 30 tournaments a year, he has 22 weeks off. Quid pro quo.

Last week at East Lakes Goosen hit into a fairway sand trap and had to scramble out sideways. For a split second Byrne was fazed because he had not factored in all the information about where Goosen was hitting his approach. It was a patch of the course he hadn't assimilated. Didn't think the ball would ever be there. For every shot at every course, Byrne needs to know everything. He had his notes and knew they were accurate. Still, he found himself on his knees scooping the water off a sprinkler head to double check the yardage, Goosen silently standing splash distance away with his arms folded, benignly observing his caddie. The sprinkler confirmed what Byrne's notes had told him. Even a metre out is unacceptable.

Working for the South African the caddie's job is simple. Convert yards to metres and have everything the player's needs without ever asking.

"What do I do? I do everything," says Byrne "I have to do everything. That's the job. From psychologist to nanny to butler to friend to coach to confidant. The key, I think, is to identify what the golfer wants from you and then identify the difference in what he wants and what he needs.

"I would be meticulous. I try to be conscientious and aware and I do my homework all the time. It's like any thing, if you do the home work it becomes a lot easier. I mean the reality of what you do if you don't caddie is not that bright. You find a lot of guys leaving to do something else but they don't know what the something else is and a lot of them come back."

Last week was not normal. Byrne repeats this. Last week was unusual. Last week he stayed in the players' hotel in Atlanta, the Carlton Ritz. When Goosen won the tournament, the player suggested Byrne cancel his flight home and take his jet down to Nona Lake, with him. The golfer rang his own PA and told her to rearrange Byrne's prior plans. The two grinning Cheshire cats were chauffeured to the door of the private jet, Byrne delightfully recalling he didn't touch a bag.

But in every Lear Jet, there is an Oklahoma to remind Byrne he's too bright to try to live another person's lifestyle. At the first US Open Goosen won in Oklahoma a thunderstorm erupted and the caddies all rushed to the small balcony the organisers allotted them. There were about 100 caddies trying to take shelter, many of them terrified that they'd get struck by lightening. The conditions were so bad Byrne went to the organisers and asked them what they thought they were doing. Told them it was pretty poor. The following year at Bethpage the tour not only provided good food and facilities, they even laid on masseurs.

"The sponsors know theses guys (caddies) are a way to the players," he says. "Now the caddies definitely have a higher profile. They are above the radar, not below it and get a lot more exposure."

Through Goosen, Byrne has an "arrangement" with TaylorMade. The Labrador in the dunes tested one set of state of the art irons in a way the factory probably didn't think of. When he needs anything it arrives and not just in ones or twos. "They'd prefer to send you 10 pairs of shoes than none," he says. With a handicap of eight, he also likes playing. But the season isn't over yet.

Picture Postcard: "We should be going to Hawaii next weekend for the Grand Slam," says the Bagman, a nonchalance creeping in. "But Retief's wife is pregnant and the baby is due the same weekend. He wants to be around for that. If Hawaii doesn't happen my next tournament will be Sun City, three weeks off."

The longer you talk, the more difficult it is to fathom. With his job is he in purgatory or heaven? "Actually he's bought a place on the coast in South Africa and he's invited myself and my girlfriend down there," says Byrne.

Forget purgatory.

(Bagman, a collection of Colin Byrne's Irish Times columns, is published by Red Rock Press, €14.99)