Stop with the caddies usually get 5-10%. Yes full time caddies, that travel 300 days a year, pay their own expenses, know every inch of every golf course you play, know your game inside and out, spend hours on the practice range, and are handed a 1099 at the end of the year get that. This wasn't the situation so its not an equal comparison. This guy was a local loop who filled in for one tournament.
From everything that had been put out about this story
- Kuchar and Ortega agreed before the tournament to a set amount for Ortega's services 1000 missed cut, 2000 made cut, 3000 top 20, 4000 top 10 per Kuchar and 3000 + "an unspecified amount of the winnings" per Ortega. Either way no one was promised a 10% cut.
- Ortega was good with the deal before the tourney started.
- Kuchar paid him per the agreement at the end of the tournament
- 10 weeks later the caddie goes Kuchar's management company asking for more money.
- Caddie is offered and additional $15K which would bring his pay up to $20K for the tourney, he turns it down.
My opinion:
Should Kuchar given him more than $5K, I think so and I think I would have, but its not my money and it doesn't really bother me that he paid him $5K instead of a higher amount.
Ortega is using the court of public opinion to squeeze more $$ out of this.
Kuchar comes off as cheap but he didn't in any way renege on the deal and fulfilled his obligation plus tip on their agreement.
Kuchar is the only one who has anything to lose in the court of public opinion.
Kuchar should have never done the interview Golf.com yesterday and given more life to this shakedown.
Its only a story because "people" think he should have paid him more, love to be outraged, and have this notion that everyone with wealth got it by oppressing someone else.
