From One Legend to Another: JoAnne Carner’s Caddie Loops for Hollis Stacy This Year

Branch Rickey, the man who integrated major league baseball by signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, often said: “Luck is the residue of design.” He meant that good fortune comes to those who work for it. Such is the amazing story of JoAnne Carner, Trevor Marrs and the U.S. Senior Women’s Open.

In 2019, Marrs was an Evans Scholar at Michigan State University and as part of his studies he was doing an internship in Connecticut. During the internship, Marrs, a 2 handicap, started to caddie at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, Conn. That work led to great good fortune and memories that will last a lifetime.

“I got to know the caddie master at Brooklawn and when the Senior Women’s Open was there [in 2021] he reached out to me and asked if I would caddie,” Marrs, 27, said Wednesday at San Diego Country Club where he is looping this week for six-time USGA champion Hollis Stacy in the 7th U.S. Senior Women’s Open.

“I said I would if he gave me the first pick of players,” said Marrs, who was back in Michigan. “When he sent the list and my dad saw Big Mama’s name on it he said: ‘Take JoAnne Carner; she’s the Arnold Palmer of women’s golf.’ So taking her was a no-brainer.”

Marrs and Carner hit it off and he ended up as her caddie twice more in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, at NCR Country Club in Dayton, Ohio, in 2022, and last year at Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh, Pa. Every year Carner, who is now 86, would shoot her age or lower. 

“It was a five-star experience,” says Marrs, who now works for a cannabis company in Michigan. “She was so much fun and so competitive. You could tell how much she loves golf. We’d hit balls for 90 minutes after every round. I learned so much from her. I’d ask, ‘what would you do with this shot’ and she’d walk me through it.”

Like the legions of fans who follow women’s golf, Marrs is disappointed that Carner is not in San Diego this year. 

“I called JoAnne a few months ago just to check on her and see how she was doing and she told me she wasn’t going to play this year,” Marrs said. “So I asked if she thought Hollis would take me and JoAnne said she’d call her. I had met Hollis at this championship several times over breakfast and on the range and she took me on.”

Marrs clearly has his hand on the pulse of the history of golf. Going from Carner to Stacy is going from one member of the World Golf Hall of Fame to another.

“I didn’t hesitate a bit when JoAnne called me,” said Stacy. “I thanked her. I have a new hip and a new shoulder and I’m happy to be out here on this really challenging golf course and happy to have Trevor on my bag.”

The Evans Scholar program is run by the Western Golf Association and provides full college tuition and housing to caddies. Nearly 12,000 caddies have graduated from college since 1930 as Evans Scholars. At Brooklawn, Marrs got a master class in the history of golf.

“We played with Carol Semple Thompson and Ellen Port,” Marrs said. “JoAnne has won eight USGA championships and Carol and Ellen have seven each. Twenty-two combined USGA victories in one threesome. I bet that’s never happened before.” 

Marrs’ cell phone is full of photos of Carner and videos of their practice sessions on the range together. In one video they are working on keeping her right hip from sliding off the ball on the backswing. Carner, who was then 82, did the drills with the energy of a teenager and even more determination.

“The amazing thing about Big Mama is that she has the vision, the skill and the courage to pull off incredible shots,” Marrs said. “At NCR we were in a bunker and to get a stance she had to put her left leg against the wall of the bunker almost at a 90-degree angle. She hits it to 10 feet and when I start to get out of the bunker she says: ‘Stay there.’ I rake the bunker, she makes the putt then tosses me the putter and says: ‘How did you like that?’”

Because Marrs was an Evans Scholar he got to Connecticut. That got him to a caddie gig at Brooklawn. That got him on Big Mama’s bag in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open. And that got him a bushel of indelible memories.

“JoAnne is so missed this week,” Marrs said. “I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, ‘Are you Big Mama’s caddie? Is she here?’” 

JoAnne Carner is not in San Diego this week but Trevor Marrs is. For him, luck truly was the residue of design.