That was because John McLaren, Johnny Long Socks as he’s known, had looked up the pin positions online the night before and written down all of the ones from the Puerto Rico Open.
Paul Casey explained what happened in a Sky Sports interview with Nick Dougherty, “10 we played to a position on the green, we knew where the flag was because we could see it.
“11 I played to a position on the green, 10 [yards] on. He actually had the pin right on 11 because he had the pin sheet out.
Johnny Long Socks.(Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)
“We get to 12, he said ‘do you need a number?’, no because we hit driver down there.
“It wasn’t until the 13th where he said ‘you need to land it on about 17’ and I said ‘but the pin is only 13 on the green.’
“He suddenly looked in his book and realised that he had written down in his book every single pin that was wrong and he couldn’t figure out why.
“Eventually we figured out it was the Puerto Rico pins he pulled off the internet the night before.
“And for the only time in his life he didn’t double-check them in the morning sitting in the breakfast room.
“We actually did not make a mistake yesterday because we played to a position on the green rather than the pin position and we caught ourselves when we played to a pin.
“But he’s gotten all sorts of abuse, Westwood threw him fully under the bus on Twitter yesterday and everybody wailed in on it.
Small shout out today to @Paul_Casey caddie #johnnylongsocks . -3 after 3 holes and then realised he was giving Paul the pin positions for the @PGATOUR event that’s happening in Puerto Rico! Nice one Johnny!🤣🤣🤣 @Fooch1993@gareth_lord
Luke Donald then shared a story from when Johnny Long Socks was on the bag for him…
Reminds me of the time I was trying out a greens book at TPC Boston and I asked JLS to look at the book – he says “slightly right to left” I said “R U sure, looks like it goes to the right” It went right – turns out he was looking at the wrong hole 🤦🏼♂️