Joe Skovron has gone from prep quarterback to clothier to coach to caddie. But if you think that makes the 1999 Linfield Christian School graduate a handyman, think again.
Since 2009, Skovron has had one focus: Manning the 14 clubs in the bag of Murrieta native Rickie Fowler, whom Skovron, 35, has known since childhood.
As the surging Southland tandem readies for Fowler’s defense this month of his Players Championship playoff victory last season, the popular caddie took a moment between events for a round of questions from Southland Golf.
Q: You were a D-III All-American in golf at the University of La Verne but you didn’t head there to play just the one sport, did you?
The reason I transferred to La Verne (after a year at UC Santa Barbara) is because I missed football so much and thought I could play both sports there. But I had a pretty good summer of golf and that was the decision to forgo getting back into football. I’m not the biggest guy in the world when it comes to what people are looking for in a college quarterback.
Q: After college, you took a shot at pro golf, right?
I got out of school in May of 2004 and played until the spring of 2007, bouncing around the mini-tours and went to Q-School a couple of times. I was on the cut line quite a bit, had a few good rounds here and there, but the resources were running out and I needed to go another route. I thought I was good enough when I went out there but just realized that I wasn’t quite there. I got to taste it a little bit, do my thing, and I think it did help me do what I do now.
Q: What was your shortcoming as a player?
I put together some pretty nice one– and two-round tournaments, but it was a struggle for me to put together three and four rounds of really good golf. I just never really learned to step it to that three– or four-round level.”
Q: After your pro golf run ended you took the head coaching golf job at your alma mater during the 2008-09 season and led La Verne to a runner-up finish at nationals. What was the experience like?
That’s what I went to school for at La Verne – a sports science degree with a teaching and coaching aspect. So, if I didn’t play pro golf I wanted to coach at the college level with golf or coach at the high school level for football and golf. It’s that fun of being part of a team, helping guys get better, the preparation. I love all those things about the process of coaching.
Q: During your playing and coaching days you also started Beyond the Links golf apparel. What did that teach you?
I started that when I was playing and then did it in the gap from about 2005 until I sold the company to one of my former teammates at La Verne in 2011. I was always interested in apparel and we were trying to create something that was like ‘Hurley meets golf.’ Now you see a lot more of that, but it was pretty rare at the time. When we started, TravisMatthew wasn’t in existence; they came along right after us and did a fantastic job with that brand. For me, it was great to get that experience of running my own company, all the different aspects of it, from marketing to design to sourcing product to shipping boxes. So, I learned a ton about the real world.
Q: How long have you and Rickie known one another?
My dad has been a club professional for around 40 years (currently the director of golf at The Legends in Temecula) and my mom has been with the Valley Junior Golf Association since 1989, so I grew up playing those events. I can remember the day Rickie came out and played his first tournament, so I’ve known him since that time, when I was in the older kids division and he was playing with the younger kids. … Then, in college and when I was playing mini-tours, I worked at what was the SCGA’s golf course (now the Golf Club of Rancho California) when Rickie was playing high school events there, and we both practiced at Murrieta Golf Range. We’d also play a few times a year from the time he was a little kid through high school, college or when I was back in town.
Q: When did you first realize he was a rare talent?
I remember calling the shop at the SCGA course – I was coming back from a tournament or something – and they’d had CIF at the course. Before that event, the tournament record was either a 65 or 66 by Steve Conway. And when I called, they told me that Rickie had shot a 62. And that was the day you kind of knew that this kid was different from everybody else, not just another kid winning tournaments. Then he started to do that on a regular basis. When you shoot sub-65 in tournaments when you’re 15, 16, 17 years old, you know there’s something different about this guy.
Q: You’ve been Fowler’s caddie since he turned pro in 2009. How did that gig come to be?
We were playing golf one day at The Journey at Pechanga and I think his dad and a couple of other people brought it up that he was looking for somebody, and they knew I had worked for Brendan Steele a bit. So Rickie asked me if I wanted to do an event in Columbus, and it went pretty well, and he asked me to come on full time. And I’ve been there ever since.
Q: What’s made you two such a successful tandem?
I think we have that foundation from before, that trust factor, the fact that I care about him outside of golf and genuinely care about him as a person; that all makes the dynamic stronger. I also think our personality types make for a good mesh. We’re very different, and I think that works well on the golf course in that we balance each other out. I’m a very routine, systematic kind of person and he’s a feel-oriented, creative person and all those things.
Q: How do you balance working together and being pals?
I think we do balance the business relationship and the personal side, and I think the age gap helps that as well. We don’t spend a ton of time together off the golf course; we’ll go get dinners, but we travel separately and rarely stay at the same place. Doing what we’re doing, you spend more time together as player-caddie than you do with your significant other, so I don’t think it’s good on that relationship if you’re going out to dinners every night or just always hanging out. He’s still my boss and it’s still a working relationship.
Q: How do you reflect on last year’s win at the Players and where do you see yourselves at present heading to TPC Sawgrass?
For that big of an event and for it to go down the way it did with the special finish, that will definitely be one of my fondest memories we’ve had to this point. Hopefully, when looking back at his career someday, it will be that first really big win that catapulted him to that next level. I think, in general, he’s playing the best golf of his life. His game is doing nothing but trending upward and he just keeps getting better and better coming down the stretch.
