Tour Caddie Dies in Del Mar

While PGA Tour golfers should have been amping up for the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines in San Diego this week, they were instead mourning the loss of the industry’s most colorful and talented caddies.

Canadian native Steve Duplantis died in Del Mar very early Wednesday morning when he stepped off a center median curb and was struck by a taxi. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

While Duplantis was on the bag for Eric Axley for the Buick, the infamous “free spirit” (who was known in the industry for having a healthy but damaging nightlife) at his young age of 35 had previously won four times with Jim Furyk in the mid-1990s, as well as with Rich Beem at the Kemper Open and with Tommy Armour III when he set the tour's 72-hole scoring record at the 2003 Texas Open. His partying reputation was overshadowed by his ability to bring out the best in the players he worked with. See Golf.com’s complete story HERE.

Due to his caddieing success at an early age, “Furyk's success allowed Steve to dive headfirst into the hard-partying caddie culture,” writes Alan Shipnuck of Sports Illustrated, who also penned the book Bud, Sweat & Tees, a candid look at the Beem-Duplantis pair. “At the '95 Colonial, [Duplantis] met a stripper named Vicki with the gravity-defying proportions of Jessica Rabbit. After the first round, they spent the night together, and Steve crawled out of bed just in time to make it to Furyk's 8:17 a.m. tee time. He cut an unmistakable figure: bed-head, an inside-out polo shirt, leather dress shoes and no yardage guide to be found. It was a sign of things to come. Steve and Vicki were married after a whirlwind 19-day courtship, and the stormy relationship became only more complicated when a daughter, Sierra, was born in early 1996, two days after Furyk's victory at the Hawaiian Open.” Read Shipnuck’s recount of the caddie’s life HERE.

I suppose there are many obvious morals and lessons one could draw from this tragedy, but I’m not going to be the one to point them out. Instead, I suggest we try to live our lives to the fullest and enjoy the game to the best of our abilities as we all do.