Woolley bags role with Wie

A former Lansdowne School, Hiona Intermediate and Makoura College student is calling the shots for probably the most talked-about player on the women's professional golf circuit, Korean-born Michelle Wie.
Brendan Woolley became fulltime caddy for Wie just before she won her first professional tour event, the Lorena Ochoa Invitational, in November 2009 and has been carrying her bag ever since, including during her only other tour success, the 2010 Canadian Women's Open.
Woolley was no mug himself as a player, being rated amongst the top juniors in Wairarapa while a member of the Masterton Golf Club where he worked in the golf shop on Sundays while still at school.
In 1988 Woolley went to Australia with the idea of mixing travel with caddying on the Australasian tour and he progressed to the US in 1989 where he linked up with American pro Kirk Triplett on the Canadian Tour.
Woolley also caddied for Kiwi Grant Waite in Canada before moving on to the USPGA tour where he filled the same role for Americans Paul Goydos and John Cook, Australian Steve Allan and New Zealand's Phil Tataurangi. He was with Goydos when he won the 1996 Arnold Palmer Invitational and with Tataurangi when he won the Las Vegas Invitational in 2002, the same year in which Woolley caddied for Aussie Craig Parry when he captured the New Zealand Open.
It was through caddy friend Patrick Tarrant that Woolley joined up with Wie. Tarrant had been with her through much of 2009 while his "boss" Brett Wetterich recovered from injury and he recommended Woolley to Wie, with the Lorena Ochoa Invitational their first outing together.
Named by Time magazine in 2006 as "one of 100 people who shape the world", Wie was a true golfing prodigy, taking up the sport at the tender age of four and becoming the youngest winner of an adult USGA-sanctioned tournament when, at the age of 13, she triumphed in the US Amateur Public Links event.
She was still 13 when she also became the youngest player to make the cut in an LPGA tournament, the 2003 Nabasco Championship, and in 2004 she became the youngest player to compete against the males in a PGA event, the 2004 Sony Open. That same year saw her become a member of the US Curtis Cup winning team - at 14, she was the youngest to achieve that feat.
So stunning was her amateur career that Wie's decision to turn professional in 2005 grabbed the sporting headlines with numerous writers tipping her to be the female equivalent of Tiger Woods (on the course at least). But while her winnings of $918,659 in 2009 and $888,017 last year are not to be sneezed at, she has struggled to live up to the hype. However, at only 21, time is still clearly on her side.
Tall and lean, Wie is a massive striker of the golf ball, averaging 285 yards per drive as a 16-year-old.
Her power certainly left an impression on one of the game's highest-profile male players, Fred Couples, who was quoted as saying: "When you see her hit a golf ball, there's nothing which prepares you for it. It's just the scariest thing I have sever seen."