Dina Ammaccapane
No polite way to say this. Cameron Kiyokawa is small. He's 5-foot-3. Weighs 115 pounds. His friends joke that he has to run around in the shower to get wet.
Kiyokawa's father is small, too. His mother is barely 5 foot. So are his grandmothers on both sides. "I come from small people," the kid said. In fact, if you were to assemble a Kiyokawa family reunion, what you'd have is a long line of people unfamiliar with such things such as top-shelf dust.
Which brings us to this weekend's LPGA golf tournament at Pumpkin Ridge.
He has a 5 handicap and he's played all the best local courses, including Pumpkin Ridge. He's also caddied some as well, and understands the rules, the pace of the game, distances, clubs and etiquette. And these things make him a strong candidate to caddie for the women's professional tournament this week.
So Cameron signed on to caddie this week -- $50 a day, plus tips -- at the Safeway Classic. He was so excited that he showed up 90 minutes early for the 8 a.m. Monday call. The master caddie at Pumpkin Ridge assigned him to Dina Ammaccapane, a 17-year tour grinder who had only $7,489 in earnings in 2009. Still, Cameron was giddy. Ammaccapane had missed four cuts in four tour tries this year. She missed the cut at the Safeway Classic, too, shooting a 156 over two rounds.
Ammaccapane eventually showed up at 4 p.m., where she was directed to her waiting caddie. Cameron walked up, and introduced himself. "She looked at me," he said, "gave me a weird look and didn't say anything." There was an awkward silence.
Then Ammaccapane said it. And I wish she hadn't. So does Cameron. So does his father, Perry, who heard the words and felt his insides hollow out.
Ammaccapane said this: "Do you have anyone bigger?"
There was some initial confusion. Some thought she was joking. This was followed by some discussion between the master caddie and Ammaccapane, who explained that she wanted someone more capable of carrying her 75-pound bag. Ultimately, it's her bag and her golf career, and so the discussion ended with the player announcing, "I would be more comfortable with someone bigger."
In the words of Randy Newman:
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