Longtime looper Andy Sanders found plenty of success on the bag of Jimmy Walker, who he helped win a major – the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol. They spent 12 years together before parting ways in 2019.
Sanders bounced around with some other guys, namely Lanto Griffin, who was dealing with a back injury in 2022. After trying to play through it, they quickly realized that wasn’t feasible, and Sanders was without a bag.
Thankfully, he knew some agents of players and began reaching out, not in search of any one specific player.
“It was more just like a, hey, I’m just letting you guys know I’m a free agent,” Sanders told us on The Loop podcast. “If anything pops up, I’m all ears.”
That led him to a trial run with Russell Henley, who was looking to make a change after the 2022 British Open at St. Andrews. Sanders joined him at the Rocket Classic, where they tied for 10th. They extended the partnership for a week at the Wyndham, where Henley tied for fifth. Sanders stayed on for the FedEx Cup Playoffs that year and the duo have been rolling ever since.
Henley has become one of the best players in the world since the partnership began, though Sanders humbly takes no credit for that. The results, however, do not lie. Henley won for the first time in nearly five years in 2023 with Sanders on the bag, and they’ve since added wins together at the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational and the 2026 Charles Schwab Challenge. They even had a legitimate chance to win the Masters this past April, with Henley tying for third, his career-best finish in a major championship.
During our full chat with Sanders, the veteran caddie tells us how Henley has leveled up over the last few years, and the one place that’s better than being in the hunt on the back nine Sunday at Augusta National. Plus, we make our FedEx St. Jude picks, and tell the story of meeting a real-life member of the Golf Twitter Burnerverse in the wild at a member-guest tournament. Please, have a listen below, and like and subscribe to The Loop wherever you get your podcasts:
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
