Unsolved mystery: How did the flag at 18 become the caddie trophy?

Not every player lets his caddie keep the flag. Phil Mickelson, for one, had a tradition where he gave his winning flag from 18 not to Bones, his caddie of 25 years until their breakup in 2017, but rather to his grandfather, Al Santos, one of the original Pebble Beach caddies, who hung them on his kitchen wall. Shortly before he died, Mickelson’s grandfather famously told him no more regular flags – he wanted a major.

Mickelson’s first major flag from the 2004 Masters went there, four months
after his grandfather’s death. As detailed in Alan Shipnuck’s unauthorized biography of Mickelson, “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and unauthorized) Biography of Golf ’s Most Colorful Superstar,” “Mackay understood and respected that gesture, but 19 more Tour victories would follow, including four majors, and he never got to keep a single flag.”

During the week of the WM Phoenix Open, Bones hosted a dinner party for players and caddies at his home and without fail he would be asked, “Where are the flags?”

“That’s a giant f— you to a caddie,” says someone described as very close to Mackay in the Mickelson biography. “When Phil wins the Masters, he gets the green jacket, the trophy, the big check, all the glory. He had to take the flags, too? … For Phil not to follow the tradition was hugely disrespectful.”

Not long after Mickelson and Bones parted ways, Shipnuck reports that Mickelson mailed him the flags from his majors.

“But Phil autographed them in comically large letters, which Mackay felt disfigured the keepsakes,” Shipnuck wrote.

Bones never displayed them in his home.

Bones didn’t participate in Shipnuck’s book, and when asked to confirm these details from the unauthorized biography, he declined. But he also didn’t refute them.

After his current boss, Justin Thomas, clinched the 2022 PGA Championship in a playoff, Bones tucked the 18th-hole flag into the left pocket of his shorts. When asked if he knew where he would display it, he smiled wide.

“I’ve got a spot in mind,” says Bones, who at press time told Golfweek the flag was at the framer’s and not yet on the wall. “Somewhere that my friends can come around and see it.”