He’s seen every Presidents Cup, and he thinks big changes are coming

MONTREAL — Most changes in golf over the last three decades can be measured in money.

This week, though, they can be measured in fabric.

“When I caddied in 1994, obviously I was there for the entire week,” Bones Mackay says. “They gave us three golf shirts to get us through the seven days and put us up in a ratty motel on the outskirts of town.”

Mackay pauses for a beat. A grin is poking between his deeply tanned skin and white teeth. His voice trails off.

“This week, the caddies are staying in the same hotel as players, riding to and from the course with players, have lockers next to players,” Mackay says. “It speaks to how much has changed — not only in golf but also at this event.”

Indeed, the Presidents Cup is changing, and nobody knows it better than Mackay. In 2024, he will continue arguably the event’s most impressive ironman streak: he has worked … all of them. Starting in 1994 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, where he was caddie for a young up-and-comer on the U.S. side named Phil Mickelson … and continuing all the way through 2024 at Royal Montreal, where he is an on-course reporter in his second tour of duty for NBC. The weight of the last 30 years in pro golf hangs over Mackay like one of those early ’90s golf shirts hangs over the elbows, but time has conferred a certain wisdom. In ’24 Mackay knows things he didn’t in ’94, and this week, that means something surprising: The Presidents Cup, he says, it getting real.

“Caddying in the last one there in Charlotte, you had amazing crowds and amazing weather,” Mackay says. “There was a moment there on Sunday where I wasn’t so sure the U.S. was going to win. It got pretty close there. I just remember thinking to myself, certainly this isn’t the Ryder Cup, but the President’s Cup has grown leaps and bounds.”

As a voice paid to care about the Presidents Cup, there are admittedly more unbiased sources of Presidents Cup optimism in the golf world. But if you’ve ever listened to Mackay on television, you know he has been gifted with a kind of golf synesthesia — his brain works in a way that sees the same golf scenes as the rest of us but experiences them differently. Usually, that looks like the scene at the 2019 Presidents Cup, when Mackay witnessed Haotong Li punch out from the trees on the third hole at Royal Melbourne. To the rest of us, it looked like a typical punch-out, but Mackay knew something was wrong.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘They’re gonna make him play this again,'” Mackay says, just as he did on the NBC broadcast then.

Mackay was right. Li had played out of order, and the Internationals were forced to replay their shot, changing the complexion of their match.

In hindsight, he says now, that was just one of a few moments in the years that have followed that has changed the way the Cup looks — and changed his perception of the event’s future.

“There are times when this event has grown chippy,” Mackay said. “It’s fun to see that up close.”

These, he admits, are not the sweeping evidence of change in the Presidents Cup that most fans are seeking. And it is true that the existence of a serious competition is dependent upon more level sparring between the sides, which has seen only one International victory ever. But Mackay’s point isn’t that the change is here, it’s that the change is coming.

After all, big changes are usually the product of many small changes before them. Things like new hotels, or gear drops so big that Mackenzie Hughes was losing clothing within them.

“It’s probably tenfold of what I thought was going to be coming our way,” he said. “My hotel room is just overflowing with stuff. It’s hard to find stuff. The first day I couldn’t find my belt. I was beltless.”

Perhaps what happens between the ropes this week will lend some credence to Mackay’s claims. But even if not, Bones won’t have to look far to see what has changed in this event over the last 30 years.

It’s right there in the wardrobe.