Golf Digest: Hey, big spender! The long and the short of tour tipping

In his first business transaction as Masters champion, Vijay Singh headed directly from the media center to the Augusta National clubhouse, gathered his belongings, then peeled off a succession of $50 bills for longtime locker-room attendants Richard Germany and Roland Gray.

Eisenhower can have his tree. Ulysses S. Grant is the official dead president of the PGA Tour.

One man's gratuity is another man's annuity, particularly in places such as Castle Pines and Muirfield Village, home not only to the tour's most opulent locker rooms, but to a level of service you won't get at Al's Diner. "Fuzzy [Zoeller] doesn't walk out of here without giving us $100," says one attendant. "Billy Ray Brown has always been nice. Billy Andrade gave us $100 after missing the cut. Darren Clarke gave us $200, which is amazing, because most of the Euros are usually pretty cheap.

"You're not from the IRS or anything, are you?"

Paranoia comes with the territory, for if there is one thing a locker-room attendant fears more than four days of rain-"it takes twice as long to clean their shoes"-it is financial disclosure. One source admits to clearing about $2,000 during tournament week, none of which Uncle Sam lays a glove on. "They [players] take great care of us," the source says. "It's like Christmas for us-we look forward to it 51 weeks a year."

Tour policy requires each player to leave a minimum tip of $20 per tournament, which isn't to be confused with the going rate for golf's upper class: Fifty beans if you miss the cut, $100 if you play all four days, at least double that if you win, make any unusual requests or go 36 holes with the locker-room buffet. As one major champion puts it, "When you take home a half-mil, you probably ought to throw the guy a bone."

Adds Lee Janzen, "At a lot of places, they're very helpful. They shine your shoes, replace your spikes, take care of your dry-cleaning, make restaurant reservations, give you directions. A lot of little things go into the job."

No one does it better than Castle Pines' Tom Horal. One reason the International continues to draw strong fields is the locker room itself, replete with leather sofas, wide-screen TVs, an in-house masseur and the tour's best milkshakes. Horal and his staff provide 24-hour service-"It could be 2 o'clock in the morning and we'll take a guy to the airport," he says.

Tiger Woods is said to have been taught the laws of frugality by his mother, Kultida, but in recent months there is evidence of a changed man. "The first time he played here, he sent his manager down and gave us $100," says an attendant. "This year he won and took care of us personally, gave us $400 and told us we were the best on tour. That really meant a lot."

Other clubhouse men have long memories. "There are a few who will [stiff] you," one says, offering an equally rigid "no comment" when asked if Woods suffers from a terminal case of crocodile arms. "Maybe golf is everything he knows. Handling people isn't his strong suit."

When it comes to deep pockets, Phil Mickelson and John Daly have been known to go the extra mile. During a rain delay one afternoon at the International, Mickelson and Tom Lehman sought shelter near the 10th hole, stopping en route for a little girl operating a lemonade stand. Both men were thirsty. When Mickelson asked how much he owed her for the refreshments, the young lady told him players drink for free.

"Then let me give you a tip," Mickelson said, folding up a greenback until it was the size of a postage stamp. The girl immediately unwrapped the bill, unveiling a smile that lit up the Rocky Mountain skyline. It might have been the best $50 Mickelson ever spent.

The left-hander's generosity has made him a locker-room legend: $500 if he makes the cut, $1,000 for a top-10 finish, $2,000 to $3,000 after a victory. He might also drop $500 on the security guards. "I know it sounds like a lot, but you have to remember that we're taking over their entire facility for a week," Mickelson says. "That's a week's worth of member's tips they don't get. We have an obligation to make up for it."

Janzen's first U.S. Open victory (1993) may have blindsided the golf world, but nobody was less prepared for such an occasion as he. "I was in a total daze, didn't have any cash, so I ended up writing the locker-room guy a check for $250," he recalls. "I got home a few days later and couldn't remember who I'd written the check to, so I stopped payment on it. The guy writes me a letter, says, 'Hey, I thought you were legit.' I ended up throwing him an extra dollar or two."

Easy for him to say.

Inside the ropes

Caddie roulette: Shortly before she was fired by Sergio Garcia at the Players Championship, caddie Fanny Sunesson asked a number of colleagues, "How did Higgie stay with him for so long?" Jerry Higginbotham worked for Garcia for seven months, or long enough to realize "El Nino" never hits a bad shot that isn't somebody else's fault.

Best practice facility on tour? At Muirfield Village, the range is a giant circle, allowing players to hit in any type of breeze. A vast majority prefer right-to-left wind-left to right affects balance, and downwind makes it difficult to gauge distance. The double-ended range at TPC at Sawgrass ranks a close second. Worst facility? Pebble Beach. "You get mud all over, you're hitting off mats half the time, and you can't see the ball land," says one tour regular. "It's almost like you can see the curve of the earth."

O'Meara's new image: After years of honing his reputation as the tour player tightest with a buck, Mark O'Meara appears ready to finish his career in style. "I'm not as thrifty as I used to be," he says. "I'm staying in nicer hotels. I'm in the jet-lease program, so I've stepped up to the plate." Still, there is no better source when it comes to economy-rate lodging. "The Hampton Inns are pretty good-most of them are new," O'Meara says. "But the best has to be Homewood Suites. Real nice. Little kitchenette." . . . More O'Meara: "In 1983, I missed the cut at Hilton Head and drove non-stop to Dallas in a Datsun pick-up truck with [caddie] Don Timm. I told Tiger, 'You want to learn something? Get yourself an old beat-up car and drive cross-country.' These young guys, they don't understand."