Who is Scottie Scheffler’s caddie?
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Get to know a bit more about Scottie Scheffler’s caddie Ted Scott, who made more than most PGA Tour stars last season
Success tends to follow Ted Scott wherever he goes. A World Foosball champion in his youth, Scott got his big break caddieing for Grant Waite in 2000 and helped him top $1 million in PGA Tour earnings for the only time in his career.
Scott stayed on his bag for three years, before moving on to Paul Azinger, whom he met in bible class. Olin Browne came next, in 2005, and famously shot a 59 in US Open Qualifying. The highs, though, were short-lived.
Bubba Watson offered Scott a job in 2006 and it proved to be the making of both of them. Together, they won 12 times, including the 2012 and 2014 Masters, before injuries and on-course bust-ups brought their relationship to an end in September 2021.
Watson says he gave Scott a “nice retirement package” to rubber-stamp their split, but not before he recommended that he find a younger player who could employ him for the next decade.
Scott found just the guy in Scottie Scheffler who, at the time, was still looking for his first PGA Tour victory. The move made a lot of sense from the outside, given Scheffler had just starred on his Ryder Cup debut, but Scott wasn’t entirely convinced he was making the right decision.
He even brought it up with Scheffler prior to accepting his job offer in November 2021.
“Basically, a friend of mine approached me and said, ‘You’re about to receive a phone call from a really good player,’” Scott told Netflix in episode four of Full Swing Season 3. “This guy is really good. Like really good.’ I had never really met Scottie other than that we played with him in the New Orleans tournament and I saw that he was kind of fiesty, you know? That was one of the questions that I asked him when he called me.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if I want to work for you because of your attitude.’ When I posed that question to him, he said, ‘That’s a fair question and I’m willing to work on it.’ All I need is a little bit of hope and I’m willing to get behind anybody. So I decided to take the job and here we are.”
On just their fifth start together, something clicked and a more chilled-out Scheffler won the Phoenix Open. He added further titles at the Arnold Palmer invitational and WGC-Match Play during a golden eight-week stretch, which ended with Scott navigating him to a first major championship victory at Augusta National.
Since then, the duo have enjoyed as much success as Tiger Woods and Steve Williams did during their pomp. In the three and a bit years they’ve worked together, Scheffler has spent more than 130 weeks atop the world rankings. He’s won two majors, one Olympic gold medal, and another 13 titles, including two Players Championships and five signature events on the PGA Tour.
None of it, according to Scheffler, would have been possible without having Scott by his side. He even credits him with helping to fight the attitude problems that hampered him throughout the early stages of his career.
“I used to fight anger issues,” Scheffler told Netflix. “I used to get too frustrated. Golf was too important to me. That’s kind of where I placed my identity for a long time. I try not to change too much but I needed to change something.”
“I’ll take credit for planting the seed,” added Scott. “But that was really a cool thing that Scottie was willing to work on that and it was exciting for me. I was like, ‘Man, this could be a lot of fun.’”
How do Scott’s earnings from 2024 compare to the stars on the PGA Tour?
Though it’s unclear how generous Scheffler is with his money, most caddies are compensated based on a sliding pay scale with a 5% cut on all earnings for making the weekend, 7% for a top 10, and 10% for a victory.
Last year Scheffler banked $55,228,358 as a result of winning eight times and claiming the $25 million jackpot for winning the FedEx Cup. He had nine top 10s and no missed cuts from his other 13 starts, which would have boosted Scott’s bank balance to somewhere in the region of $5.33 million for 87 rounds of work (he missed the third round of the PGA Championship due to his daughter’s graduation from college).
Using that $5.33 million as a baseline figure, his earnings were bettered by 18 of the 245 players who competed on the PGA Tour last season (not including bonuses). The likes of Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland and Tommy Fleetwood all earned less.
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Caddie Ted Scott has been on Scottie Scheffler's bag since late 2021.
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Ted Scott has helped Scottie Scheffler win the Green Jacket twice and an Olympic gold medal.
