It’s not often that parents do not caddy for their kids in US Kids tournaments. If they are not on the bag it is mostly because they cannot handle the pressure, or the kids cannot handle the burden of the pressure placed on them. Sometimes parents are simply lazy and sometimes they get fired.
Should they caddy if they are available? In bigger, more important tournaments when a parent caddy is the norm, unless the child has explicitly banned the parent from the bag I believe they should suck it up, shut up and at least push the bag. This provides an element of moral and physical support and helps keeps up pace of play.
More annoying than an absentee caddy are parents that drive along, while the child pushes the cart in the brutal heat, and show up inappropriately. Rob chunks a chip buried in the rough and flops it into the soft upper slope of the adjacent bunker with an angry “God dammit”. ‘Moralizing mom’ flies from her ‘holier than thou’ perch in her cart up to the green and confronts him : We don’t like that language here!
Lady, I don’t like it either, but unless you got a caddie-bib on you’re suppose to stay on the cart path and not interfere with the players!
Rob did not play as consistently as he did yesterday. He struggled with distance and left shots short. That being said, he qualifies for these invitational tournaments through his brother (2nd place finish this tournament in his age group for Bear) but he held his own in the strong regional field. He can get angry with himself (and me) and run his mouth a little, but you will not find a more supportive and complementary playing partner. Pity that cannot be said about some parents.