Former player Tom Gillis starting new life as caddie on PGA Tour for Tom Hoge

GRAND BLANC, MI — Tom Gillis is going back to the PGA Tour. He just doesn’t need to travel with his golf clubs anymore.

That’s because he’ll be carrying somebody else’s.

Gillis, a veteran of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions, is making the transition from a long life as a player to a new life as a caddie — a career change that actually is quite uncommon, not doing both, but doing both at the game’s highest levels. Gillis has caddied much of the season on the 50-and-older circuit, but next month, he will start working full time for Tom Hoge on the PGA Tour. This past week’s Ally Challenge was his second-to-last tournament working for PGA Tour Champions player George McNeill.

“I sat home for two years, like, trying to figure out what I was going to do in this retirement thing,” Gillis, 58, said last week, standing on the putting green at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club, before heading off to work a pro-am for McNeill. “Like, what are we going to do here? I’m adding years to my life doing this, versus sitting around watching Netflix at 1 o’clock on a Wednesday. And I enjoy it. I really do. I get to be a part of it. I’m still in on the action.”

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Gills played for decades across the globe, in more than 20 countries before retiring after the 2024 Ally Challenge, the last of his 92 PGA Tour Champions tournaments. That followed 188 PGA Tour events and 99 Korn Ferry Tour outings, to say nothing of his years of grinding as a globetrotter.

He’s coached a little high school golf, and was a dutiful husband and dad and dog dad in Florida. But he started thinking about caddying, oddly enough for someone who hadn’t carried his own bag since college in the 1980s, and he figured it might be a logical and fiscal fit, if his body could hold up after injuries hampered the end of his career on the PGA Tour Champions. So earlier this year, he hooked up with McNeill, who he had met at Warwick Hills in 2007 during the old Buick Open, which they were both playing. The two Midwestern boys hit it off and stayed in touch.

McNeill turned 50 in October, and asked Gillis to join him for his rookie season on the 50-and-older tour. Gillis has played most of these courses, and McNeill knew that’d be a big help. His playing experience was an asset, and his general know-what’s up about everything off the course just made the transition that much smoother for McNeill.

“Not only the golf courses, but where to stay, where to eat, that’s all new for me, all these new towns I’ve never been to,” McNeill said. “So that’s helped out and kind or relieved some pressure and some stress on me.”

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That goes for on the course, too, of course.

“He keeps you loose,” McNeill said. “He keeps everybody loose out there. That’s how he was as a player, too.”

Is Gillis as a big of a smart ass as he was as a player?

“Absolutely,” McNeill said with a grin. “Yeah, yeah. You’ve got to be. But, you know, that’s what keeps it loose.”

Gillis built a reputation as a pro’s pro on the golf course. He knows just about everybody, from the grinders to the greats; as he was talking to a reporter last week, three-time major champ and World Golf Hall-of-Famer Padraig Harrington walked by, with Gillis chiding him, “You walk around here like you own the place!”

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When to speak up, when to shut up as a caddie

He also built a reputation for speaking his mind, on the golf course, and especially on social media — where his brash, bold, who-gives-a-f*** takes occasionally got him in hot water with PGA Tour brass. But Gillis has learned when to speak up and when to shut up as a caddie.

“You’ve got to be very, very careful with what you say. You’ve got to choose your words wisely, the timing of what you say is everything,” Gillis said. “When your guy’s playing good, man, all you’ve really got to do is just stay the heck out of the way. You just keep saying positive things. And when things are good bad, you’re even still positive, you know?

“I think it helps me a bit as far as, I know what they’re going through. They know I’ve been through it. So when I talk, it might mean a little more, just because, ‘Well, he’s been through it,’ versus just another caddie who’s just, this is his job. I’m not knocking them. You get a little more respect from your player, being a guy that’s played and labored doing it.”

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Of course, you get the respect (by the way, Gillis now has more respect for caddies, too), but you also get ribbed relentlessly — especially in the group chat — when you screw something up. Gillis hasn’t gotten a yardage wrong (yet; it’ll happen at some point, he said). He hasn’t allowed a 15th club in the bag. No major errors. But a couple weeks ago during a tournament in Seattle, Gillis ducked into the woods to, well, you know (yes, even pros and caddies find their own bathrooms), and came back to McNeill, reached for his yardage book, and realized he didn’t have it. He left it in the woods. That was his first oh-s*** moment. Fortunately, he could use the range finder.

“I’m not going to fire it right away,” McNeill told Gillis, of the group chat. “But the guys are gonna hear about this one.”

If that’s the worst mistake Gillis makes, he’ll be OK in his new gig. The biggest question when he took McNeill’s bag was if his body could hold up. The bags are heavy (50 pounds at least), and the heat can be relentless. Gillis has been able to handle it. Months ago, Hoge, 37, who was a young up-and-comer when Gillis was wrapping up his run on the PGA Tour, had floated the idea about coming to work for him, and Gillis wasn’t so sure. He could handle the bag on PGA Tour Champions, where tournaments are mostly three days, and they can take carts.

He wasn’t so sure about the PGA Tour, where tournaments are four days, and there are no carts. But last month at the U.S. Senior Open in Ohio, where the tournament was four days, there were no carts allowed, and temperatures were scorching, Gillis wasn’t fazed. Same held true during a one-week cameo with Hoge at the Wyndam Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, earlier this month.

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He’s finally adjusted to the Florida heat, after years of living there full time. So he said yes to Hoge. Gillis’ first tournament on Hoge’s bag will be the Biltmore Championship in Asheville, North Carolina, in mid-September. It’s the first even of the PGA Tour’s fall schedule. McNeill will be sad to see Gillis go, but he doesn’t blame him one bit.

“Look man, I get it. There’s a lot of money on the (PGA) Tour if you get in there with the right player, and Tom Hoge is a very good player,” McNeill said before finishing tied for 44th at The Ally. “Hell, if I had that opportunity, I might take it. Nothing’s forever.”

McNeill has made a little more than $1.2 million this year. Assuming Gillis gets the standard 8 percent, he’s made nearly $100,000 on McNeill’s bag, plus a weekly stipend of $2,500 or so to cover expenses. Gillis has become quite good at stretching that stipend, among the biggest changes from his playing days. He doesn’t fly first class anymore, and he rents compact cars now. Gillis surely misses some of those luxuries, though he certainly doesn’t miss lugging his own bag through airport security.

Meanwhile, Hoge made about $1.8 million this season, a down year for him; 8 percent of that is about $140,000, but the opportunity for more is significantly greater, especially if Hoge, who once was ranked No. 24 in the world, plays his way into the huge-money signature events (and if he makes the new Championship Series, which is coming to the PGA Tour in 2028). Hoge topped $4 million each of the four seasons before this one. He won at Pebble Beach in 2022.

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Gillis never did win on the PGA Tour or PGA Tour Champions. Winning as a caddie wouldn’t be quite the same feeling of career validation, but it’d be close, he said. It’d also be a huge financial windfall. Caddies typically get a boost to 10 percent of a champion’s check, so a win by Hoge could be worth up to $400,000 (or more, as purses keep growing) for Gillis.

The biggest check of Gillis’ playing career was about $500,000, twice — from a playoff loss to Jordan Spieth at the John Deere Classic in 2015, and from a tie for second at the 2012 Honda Classic. Those two tournaments accounted for nearly one-fifth of Gillis’ entire career earnings on the PGA Tour, where he made more than $1 million in a season once. On the PGA Tour Champions, where you get to see lots of old friends but not the old purses, he topped $500,000 in a season twice, his first two seasons, buoyed by seven top-5s when he was the new “kid” on the block.

“I’ve thought about that a lot. Even if George won the Champions, that would mean a lot because I never won,” said Gillis, a two-time Michigan Open champ whose last win came on the Nationwide Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) in 2009. “It would really mean a lot because you feel it. It would be the next-closest thing that you could do, because you had a piece in it. Yeah, it’d be very satisfying for me, to be able to pull that flag off the stick on that last green and keep that flag. I’ve seen guys do that for years. That would be a different kind of an honor. I mean, I’ve won 15 times as a pro, but never on Tour. … Yeah, it’s been a long time. So it would be special, even though I wasn’t hitting the shots.”

Which job is harder: Player or caddie? It’s obvious

That’s an adjustment, to be sure. Gillis’ livelihood as a caddie as opposed to a player is largely out of his hands, but asked which job is harder, he didn’t hesitate. The player has it the toughest, without question. After all, raking the bunker is way easier than blasting out of the bunker, finding the driver is way easier than finding the fairway. The stress is real for both, whether it’s on the cut bubble on Friday, or in the final group on Sunday. But it’s always the player’s play that is going to determine the payday for both.

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Gillis will get one more chance at a win with McNeill — though the two aren’t ruling out occasional reunions next season, perhaps on Hoge’s off weeks — before heading off to the PGA Tour again.

It’s been a while since he was on the PGA Tour full time, and it’s been over a decade since Gillis last played on the PGA Tour. The faces certainly have changed, but not the game. And he knows the game. The game is Gillis’ bag.

These days, it’s just somebody else’s bag.

Who is Tom Gillis?

• Hometown: Lake Orion, Michigan

• Education: Oakland Community College; Coastal Carolina

• Professional highlights: Gillis played on multiple pro golf tours across the globe, including multiple stints on the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions. He lost in a playoff to Jordan Spieth at the 2015 John Deere Classic. He won the 1994 and 2008 Michigan Open.

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This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Former player Tom Gillis starting new life as caddie on PGA Tour for Tom Hoge