More
Than
Just
Bag
Men
T
he most noticeable feature
about PGA Tour winner James
Hahn’s 2016 season leading
into the Wells Fargo Championship in early May was the
eight consecutive missed cuts.
Hahn and his caddie, Mark Urbanek,
talked after every single one of them.
“He really had a good attitude through
the whole stretch. We had good talks at
the end of each tournament about what
we felt we’re doing right or what we could
do different. It was always positive,” said
Urbanek, a 2001 College of William and
Mary graduate. “There’s stretches where
guys might miss eight cuts and shoot 75s
and 79s and kind of hit it all over and that
was never the case. He didn’t play great
every tournament, but he always felt he
was really close. … He’d been saying for
22
months he felt he could win the next
tournament. And it happened.”
Hahn, who had not played on a Sunday since Super Bowl Sunday, won the
Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow Golf Club in
Charlotte, N.C., on the first extra hole of a
playoff with Roberto Castro.
After the victory and before The
Players Championship in a Golf Channel
video, Hahn spoke of the encouragement
he got from Urbanek during the weeks of
missed cuts.
Hahn responded to a comment about
not having a mental coach by saying,
“but it seems like my caddie is. I’m going
to have to start paying him a little extra I
guess. … He’s a runner; he runs a lot. He’s
actually going to run the Chicago Marathon. He’s run the New York Marathon
and the Boston Marathon.
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | J U LY /A U G U ST 2 0 1 6
Mark Urbanek and James Hahn eye
a putt at the Byron Nelson Classic.
vsga.org
PHOTO CREDIT HERE
Two PGA Tour caddies with Virginia ties—Mark Urbanek
and Dustin Groves—share their stories about looping on
the world’s biggest golf stage by ARTHUR U