Tiger Wood’s Caddie Shares Funny Story About How Tiger Stiffed Him During Their First Dinner Together

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Veteran caddie Joe LaCava has been Tigers right-hand man for seven years now, unfortunately being late to the party for all 14 of Tiger’s major titles.

Nonetheless, LaCava has been gifted with the rare opportunity to observe the intricacies of arguably the most accomplished athlete of modern times. In the past, he’s told stories of Tiger’s relentless competitiveness–like that time Tiger wouldn’t speak to him for a day because LaCava kicked his ass in the basketball game H.O.R.S.E.

Today, during a podcast with Golf Digest, LaCava recalled the funny story of meeting Tiger for dinner for the first time back in 2011. Moral of the story: If you’re on time, you’re late.

“The first time I went out to dinner with him, he says ‘alright, let’s meet here at 5:30.’

… And so I show up at 5:30, I go to the restaurant and they say ‘who are you here with?’ and I say ‘I’m here with Tiger,’ he’s in the back, no problem.

So I go in the back, it’s 5:30, he has now already eaten his salad, and he’s waiting for his steak to be delivered. We’re talking, and he really doesn’t even look up, he’s just eating. Really doesn’t even kind of look at me, but we’re talking. And so he literally ate his steak before I got my salad, and he finished his meal before I finished my salad, and he got up and left.

It wasn’t in a bad way, but come to find out 5:30 for him means like 5:15, which I found out later. And if you’re not there, he’s just going to order. He doesn’t even look at the menu. He wants the porterhouse, medium well, and he wants a salad and that’s it.”

I’m totally down with Tiger’s mindset. The ‘wait until everyone has their food to eat’ can go straight to hell with holding the door for people and saying ‘bless you’ after they sneeze. Team Tiger.

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.