'If I needed advice from my caddie,' the legendary Bobby Jones once quipped, 'he'd be hitting the shots and I'd be carrying the bag.'
OK, so Clay Devers, my 'bag' for the week, might not boast anywhere near the same achievements on the course as the 13-time major winner, but he is still a talented player, good enough to have won four times on the Asian professional circuit.
Would he be looking for me to help pilot him round Fanling's tight fairways and tricky greens - a course I play a couple of times a year [always badly]? Would I be treated as the confidant, the sounding board, the therapist and psychologist that today's professional caddies are made out to be? Or would he, as Jones would have, just want me to show up, keep up, and shut up?
Lifting Clay's enormous tour bag for the first time, however, had me doubting whether I could even keep up. 'You're lucky,' he said with a big grin, 'that's the lighter version - it only weighs 12 pounds.' But that's when it's empty. When you add 14 clubs, an umbrella, umpteen balls, four gloves, two bananas, four bottles of water, a bottle of sun lotion, a set of waterproofs, fistfuls of tees, a box of bandages, a rule book and a couple of tins of chewing tobacco (Clay eschews gum for the 'real flavour') it no longer weighs only 12 pounds. It weighs closer to 60, and the only way to lug around the damn thing is by slinging a single leather strap over your shoulder - by the ninth hole it's digging into my flesh.
To say that Clay's swing is unorthodox would be kind to the likeable American. Keeping his hands incredibly low and pressed forward at address, he waggles the clubhead violently before lurching back, his legs jiving along to some crazed disco beat that they alone can hear, to the top of his backswing where he pauses slightly before thundering back down through the ball.
It's a refreshingly ugly method for a pro but it's also highly effective as he cracks one down the first fairway, way beyond European Tour regular David Park's ball and alongside that of amiable Filipino player Angelo Que - Clay's two playing partners for the first 36 holes.
