College Scholarship For Caddies Gains Traction On East Coast

Abbey Sisler is a 2022 Evans Scholarship winner about to begin a full ride at the University of Maryland this week. The program that sends caddies to college was started by Chick Evans Jr., the first golfer to win both the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open in the same year with the aid of the Western Golf Association.

The scholarship has over 11,800 alumni, a list that includes former CEOs of Deere & CompanyDE
and Kimberly-Clark Corp. Graduates of the scholarship program collectively donated $17.5 million to the charity last year to support the next generation of caddies. All proceeds from the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship also benefit the scholarship.

Sisler was a far cry from the double-break reading guru she is today when she started caddying three summers ago, but was driven and determined to hone her skills from day one. Her father and older brother, who is also an Evans Scholar, had worked as caddies at Friar’s Head on Long Island but that didn’t mean she gained their golf knowledge by osmosis.

When she first stepped foot on the turf at Sebonack, a tony private club in the Hamptons, Sisler had a grasp of the basic lay of the land of a golf course. She had the broad strokes down pat, knowing the difference between fairways, roughs, greens and bunkers but that was the extent of her course knowledge. When it came to the gameplay itself, there was an even steeper learning curve.

“My first ever loop was definitely something I didn’t expect. I thought I’d just be carrying the golf bag until I was asked if I knew what a ‘par’ was,” Sisler remembers.

“I said no thinking it was nothing major, until I saw the strangest looks on everybody’s faces. I realized I needed to step it up and learn what golf is and from thereon out that motivated me to want to caddy and get out on the course,” she adds.

Sisler caddied five days a week, arriving at the course at 7 a.m. sharp, Wednesdays through Sundays. She would sometimes sit around in the Caddyshack for upwards of six hours before she would get a loop. Receiving the Evans Scholarship taught her that hard work can pay off and she is very grateful for all the support she has received.

“I would recommend anybody goes into caddying. You don’t need to know golf as long as you put yourself out there. The Evans Scholars Foundation provides youth caddies programs throughout the United States. There are so many opportunities for youth caddies,” Sisler says.

She will be studying Special Education following in the footsteps of her mother and both her grandmothers who all worked in the field. She chose the University of Maryland, a newer­­­­ Evans Scholarship partner, to help spotlight the scholarship outside of the Midwest where it began and still has its largest presence.

“I definitely wanted to raise awareness on the East Coast about this scholarship. There are 90 caddies [to win it] on the east coast from around 50 sponsoring clubs and I want to help people recognize the opportunity that they have out here,” Sisler says.

As her caddie skills grew with each loop around Sebonack and its sweeping panoramas of Great Peconic Bay, Sisler also ended up taking up the game and she made her high school squad.

“I haven’t really had the opportunity to golf much this summer but when I have, there are a lot of skills that I subconsciously picked up from being out on the golf course caddying,” Sisler, says.

“Being a caddie, you watch everybody play. You watch their stance, how they putt and how they hit each club and take notes for yourself in your head. Even just watching the muscle memory of golfers can be reflected in your own game,” adds Sisler.

For this school year 1,100 Evans Scholars are attending 22 Universities and they are tracking toward their goal of reaching 1,500 in school annually by 2030.

“Between now and 2030 we are on pace to bring one new university online per year to be able to house all the scholars that we have coming in as we grow,” Ed Brockner, vice president of east region development for the Evans Scholars Foundation, says.

“We are very careful and selective in terms of who we want to work with. It’s a year’s long process to go from concept to launch and we are really excited about the schools we have and as we grow we’ll continue to look into schools that fit that same profile of the ones we have already,” he adds.

Over the past four years, applicants from the East Coast have more than doubled and they’ve invested more than $2 million to grow youth caddie programs in the region. Brockner also credits the BMW Championship, the charity’s biggest booster, with increasing east coast awareness. The last couple editions of the penultimate FedEx Cup playoff event, including last weekend’s tournament in Wilmington, Delaware have been played on the Eastern seaboard as was the 2018 edition.

“When we came to Aronimink in Pennsylvania a few years ago, that was a very intentional decision by the Western Golf Association and Evans Scholars Foundation to build partnerships with groups like the Golf Association of Philadelphia and the J. Wood Platt Caddie Scholarship Trust and to put our flag in the ground in the East,” Brockner says.

Along with Maryland, Penn State and Rutgers are the other most recent schools to hop aboard the Evans train. The scholarship’s newest program, ‘Caddie Scholar Prep’ was launched this year to recruit, train and mentor students who meet the requisite academic and need-based criteria and provide them the opportunity to earn an Evans Scholarship.