Growing up on the eastern end of Long Island, Duane Bock always dreamed of traveling the world with a golf bag on his shoulder.
He’s done just that, rubbing shoulders in pairings with Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Scottie Scheffler. The game has taken him inside the ropes at Augusta National, included final-round pairings at the British Open and PGA Championship, and even the Summer Olympics in Paris. The game has given Bock everything that his father, Dave, promised him it could be.
“My dad always told me that the game of golf will last you a lifetime, it will teach you life lessons, it will teach you everything you want to know about life, and it has,” Bock said.
Only Bock, 55, has never hit a shot in a PGA Tour event; instead, he became an invaluable sidekick as a caddie of 20 years, most notably with Kevin Kisner and for the past few years with Sepp Straka. He’s come a long way from the caddie yard at Maidstone Club in East Hampton, N.Y., where he started out slinging a single bag for $7.50. Next week, he’ll work his second Ryder Cup – for Team Europe – this time at Bethpage Black and not far from where his dream began.
Bock learned the game in his backyard
At age 5, Bock’s father introduced him and his two older brothers to the game in their backyard. Their first club was a cut-down hickory-shafted 7-iron with electrical tape wrapped around the end for a grip. “He said, ‘Go out there and figure out how to hit it,’ ” older brother Darrell recalled.
By the time Duane was nine years old, he was playing in a Met PGA junior tournament at Smithtown Landing. Witnessing his brother Darrell win the MGA Junior at age 17 gave him a high bar to chase. At age 13, he followed in his brother’s footsteps as a caddie at Maidstone Club. But the priceless perk was playing privileges after 5 p.m. every day at the esteemed course and young Duane took advantage.
Despite his game progressing, he didn’t attract much attention from college recruiters and landed at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C., which offered him the opportunity to walk on to the golf team. He earned a spot in his first semester and went on to win four college tournaments while becoming the first player in Big South history to be named all-conference all four years. He capped off his amateur career by winning the prestigious North and South Amateur Championship at Pinehurst No. 2 with brother Darrell serving as his caddie in 1992. Bock ranked ninth among amateurs when he turned pro in 1993, and the Maidstone membership raised $50,000 in seed money for Bock’s professional career. Bock traces his success to that group of members as well as the Maidstone pro at the time, David Alvarez.
“My brother wouldn’t be where he is today without their generosity, beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Darrell Bock said.
Bock parlayed his club’s financial support into globetrotting on the Sunshine Tour, the Canadian Tour as well as in Central America. In South Africa, he played against the likes of Nick Price, who was world No. 1 at the time, and Els, who was full of promise. In Canada, he cut his teeth against future Masters champ Mike Weir. He never won but finished second nine times, once four-putting on the last green to lose by one. He combined to win more than 20 times on the Carolina Mountain Tour, Triangle Tour and Tarheel Tour. But he failed to make the PGA Tour. One year at Q-School, he shot 42 on his last nine holes to miss going to the final stage by one. Another time, he shot 64 in the first round but stalled out and missed again at second stage.
Bock was a short hitter in an era when the titanium driver and the Titleist Pro V1 were morphing golf into a power game. The writing was on the wall at his last Q-School when he was hitting to the corner of a dogleg, leaving himself an 8-iron and his competitors were airmailing trees for flip wedges.
“For a day or two, I could still compete,” he said, “but over four days, it wears you out.”
He played professionally for 12 years, but in 2005, he concluded that the life of a mini-tour pro was no longer for him. His wife had been supporting the family while he was out on the road and with the couple’s first child, daughter Albany, who would go on to play Division II golf in college, on the way, it was time to find a new career.
“It was my turn to take over the reins and support my wife rather than the other way around and that’s how I got into caddying,” he said.
Canadian Tour friends started his caddying career
Friends from his Canadian Tour days – Rich Massey, Ken Duke and Doug LaBelle – helped him get started. He hooked up with LaBelle until, as he put it, “I caddied Doug right off the Tour.” It was during a practice round ahead of a U.S. Open qualifier in Memphis in 2007 that he met Kevin Kisner, fresh out of the University of Georgia, and hit it off.
They stayed in touch and Kisner liked him enough to ask Bock about working for him at the final stage of PGA Tour Q-School in 2008 if he made it. At 8 a.m., the morning after Kisner advanced, Bock seized the opportunity, calling and asking if he could work his bag. They missed getting a Tour card by a stroke, but it was the start of a beautiful relationship. Bock spent one year caddying for him on what is now known as the Korn Ferry Tour before graduating to the big leagues. Kisner lost his card in his rookie season, went back to Q-School and won it back only to be demoted again. Knowing that Bock wouldn’t make as much money in golf’s Triple-A, Kisner offered to help find him a new boss for the following season. Bock refused to jump ship.
“He believed that I was going to break through and he wanted to see it through,” Kisner recalled.
Bock helped Kevin Kisner for 14 years
Kisner won again to earn his promotion back to the big leagues and this time he stuck. They spent a total of 14 years together, winning four times, with Kisner banking nearly $30 million in earnings. Along the way, Bock’s calves, which are as big as tree trunks, became so notorious that they gained their own social media handle (@DwayneBocksCalves) and a North Carolina microbrewery put them on one of their labels. He and Kisner squabbled like an old married couple and needled each other and laughed and talked for all those years, complementing their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses.
“He was a calming influence,” Kisner said. “No matter if we were 7 under or 7 over, he kept the same attitude, which is something I loved about him.”
Bock was on the bag when Kisner held the 54-hole lead at the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club and shared the 54-hole lead at the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie Golf Links before finishing T-7 and T-2, respectively.
“Anyone can rake a bunker, get a yardage, tend a pin, but what separated Dewey (Bock’s nickname since childhood) for me was he always said the right thing at the right time,” Kisner said.
To illustrate his point, Kisner launched with gusto into the story of the time he competed in a record-tying six-man playoff at the 2021 Wyndham Championship. Kisner was winless in five previous playoffs, but Bock knew how to marshal his talents.
“Dewey reminds me that I won a playoff to get into match play against Ian Poulter the year I won (the 2019 WGC Dell Match Play), so he says that I’m 1-5,” Kisner said.
In his self-deprecating fashion, Kisner had the perfect response: “We’re not really increasing our odds to win in this playoff too much with six guys going at it.”
And what did Bock say after his boss made birdie on the second extra hole to claim victory? “You beat five guys in this one, so I think you’re 5-5 now,” Bock deadpanned.
Kisner suggested Bock work with Sepp Straka
Bock caddied for all four of Kisner’s Tour victories. In 2023, Kisner’s game struggled and after he withdrew from the first round of the Travelers Championship, he told Bock he planned to take an extended break. Bock thought he was going to enjoy the rest of the summer at home in North Carolina with his family and watch his son, Alex, who now plays on the men’s golf team at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, compete. But then he got a call from Kisner that Sepp Straka, the strapping Austrian native and former Georgia Bulldog, needed a caddie for the British Open. In their first week together, Straka shot a final-round 62 to win the John Deere Classic.
Two weeks later, Bock shouldered the bag at the British and they finished T-2, his best result in a major. Kisner sensed an awkward conversation in the offing and decided to get ahead of it. “You’re having too much success,” he group-texted to them. “I don’t know what you’re thinking but you guys have my blessing.”
“That was really cool of Kis,” said Bock, who is loyal to a fault. “He told me to take the job.”
Next thing Bock knew, he was carrying at golf’s biggest spectacle, the Ryder Cup, in Rome in late September 2023 for Straka. The first thing Bock did upon hearing Straka was a captain’s pick for the Ryder Cup team that year was to change out his U.S. Presidents Cup cover on his yardage book from working for Kisner.
“At the end of the day, my job is to make sure that whoever I work for accomplishes their goals and their dreams,” Bock said.
Contributing to the victorious Euro side ranks as one of the great experiences of his career. Bock enjoyed returning to Pinehurst No. 2 for the U.S. Open last June, where his name is on a locker for being a North & South champion, and being on the bag for a win at The American Express earlier this year. [He was sidelined with an injury when Straka won again in May at the Truist Championship.] Looming ahead always has been a potential Ryder Cup date this September at Bethpage Black, not far from where he grew up. “The New York crowd will just be unbelievable,” he said. “I’d love to be able to work it.”
Straka was a captain’s pick by European captain Luke Donald. It represents a full-circle moment in Bock’s journey from the family’s modest means and the Maidstone caddie yard to being considered one of the best in his chosen profession.
“I love what I do and I’d like to do it for as long as I can,” Bock said. “Every day I wake up, I just can’t wait to go to work.”
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