"After I went par, birdie, birdie, I sacked him."

Little-known Tony Carolan leads the Euro Tour's Ballantine's Championship in South Korea after an interesting first day. Trent Baker reports, but here's Carolan's press conference:

Q. Glad to get in?

TONY CAROLAN: Very happy, yeah. Put a new driver and 3-wood in the bag this week, and I was quite happy with my 3-wood. There's a lot of holes out here where I can hit my 3-wood 250 and leave myself a solid 8- or 9-iron to the green.

Got to have to a good start and made a good 2-putt par on the first and hit it close off the two, made a nice birdie from three feet. And the next, I hole it from about ten feet. Didn't birdie the next but three in a row, the first four holes.

Then I got a new caddie. He was jiggling clubs while putting; moving; he had soft spikes on, so he wasn't allowed on the greens. I just told him to go.

After I went par, birdie, birdie, I sacked him. He was just terrible. I'm paying him a USD$160, and he couldn't walk on the greens. I said man, you've got to stay off the greens. The other caddies were doing too much work.

Q. First time you've ever sacked a caddie on the course?

TONY CAROLAN: No. I think it's the second time. The other guy raked a bunker while I was in there after I told him not to. Actually I didn't sack him then, I sacked him the next day.

Q. So you've never sacked someone during a round?

TONY CAROLAN: I don't think so but I think I've been sacked by a caddie, though!

Hmmmm....

Q. What's your background?

Translation: who the hell are you?

TONY CAROLAN: Played in the mid 90s early onwards on the Asian Tour, and then I went to Canada and played on and off there for six years, one year where I played Challenge Tour, had conditional status in 2000. Then had some injuries, and in 2004, I got a full exempt card on the Nationwide Tour and was exempt and played the whole year with a torn cartilage. The physios out there had no clue, they just kept saying, you've got to stretch more, you've got to stretch more. I'm driving 20 hours in a car week-to-week; do you think I'm just getting out of the car and going to bed, of course I'm in the stretching after long drives. So I had pretty much 2005 off. I didn't do much, played some Pro-Ams.
End of 2005 I went to Asian Q-School, so I had the whole year off and went to Q-School, got my card. That was when the caddie raked the bunker. I got a two-stroke penalty and went from 13th to 31st at the Q-School, cost me a category and stats in all the big events. So I had to really work to get exempt and finished 34th last year.

This year, I think I'm about 20th an the Asian Tour Money List. I've played every week, first week at Emaar, withdrew after 15 holes, sick as a dog, and then I think I was 19th at Jakarta and then 14th at the SAIL Open, so I was a little disappointed with that. I went into Johnnie Walker and finished 17th, and last week I shot 3-under and missed the cut by a shot. 12 birdies, 3-under to miss the cut, I just made too many mistakes. Today I made the 6-footers.

And fired a caddy. All in all, just another ho-hum day on the European Tour.