Former P.G.A. Champion Mark Brooks Caddies for J. J. Henry PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - A seven-time PGA Tour winner missed the Players Championship cut by two strokes without even hitting a shot. Mark Brooks, whose tour victories include one major, the 1996 P.G.A. Championship, caddied for J. J. Henry, who finished at two over, 13 strokes higher than the 36-hole leader, Sergio García. Brooks, 52, a regular on the Champions Tour, was invisible even by caddie standards on Friday at the T.P.C. Sawgrass Stadium Course. Henry was in the group directly behind Tiger Woods, the world No. 1, who carded a 67 to García's 65 to move into second, one stroke back. Only 13 players in the 145-man field had more career tour wins than Brooks, who will return to the Champions Tour in two weeks for the Senior P.G.A. Championship after taking time off to recover from knee surgery. Pros in other sports have carved out second careers in coaching: Joe Girardi in baseball, Mark Jackson in basketball, and Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl in tennis, to name a few. But it is virtually unheard-of for a major winner in golf to take a turn coaching from inside the ropes, which is what caddies essentially do. "I guess you'd say it's ego," said Brooks, who earned more than $9.4 million in more than 30 years on the PGA Tour. He shrugged. "What's the big deal?" he said. I mow my lawn sometimes, too. Brooks made 794 starts on the tour, a credential that few players, never mind caddies, can boast. At 49, Davis Love III and Jeff Maggert are among the older players in this week's field. "I've played a lot of golf tournaments," Brooks said, "so I've seen a lot of shots. There are not a lot of shots out here that I haven't seen played or hit myself, properly or improperly. In trying to help Henry, his neighbor in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Brooks realized that range sessions were inadequate. "It's a lot easier to identify things players need to work on when you're actually right there with them during a round as opposed to going to a range," Brooks said. Most of the instructors running around, they ought to put the strap on for a week. They'd be better instructors. Brooks was standing outside the scoring area as he spoke, leaning on Henry's bag. A few yards away, Woods was conducting a group interview after signing for a round that included one eagle, five birdies and two bogeys. Brooks nodded in Woods's direction and said one of Woods's strengths was his ability to hit the same iron different distances as the situation dictated. "He can take his 9-iron, and he has three or four legitimate yardages for it depending on how he wants to shape the shot, what trajectory he needs," Brooks said. A lot of guys, it's unfortunate, but quite a few players, even good players, they kind of paint by numbers out here. They have to have the right yardages, or they're not comfortable. That's a problem out here because you almost never ever have perfect yardages. With Brooks on his bag at this event last year, Henry tied for 40th. Brooks said that he has tried to impress upon Henry that the game's vagaries - mud balls, tricky winds, bad bounces and the like - are as integral a part of the sport as dimples are to a ball. They are challenges to embrace, not excuses to evoke if the execution proves faulty. "One thing I try to get him to do is take responsibility for his shots, really do it, deep down, whatever happens," Brooks said. And the second thing is to work on his deficiencies. People want to work on what they're proficient at. As painful as it is, recognize what your deficiencies are and work on them until they are no longer deficiencies. The learning process goes both ways. After caddying for Henry last year, Brooks took out handfuls of tees, spare change and balls to reduce the bag's weight. "I'm more sensitive to how heavy a bag can get," he said. Brooks doles out yardages and tough love in equal measure. On the par-3 17th, Henry's eighth hole of the day, he was studying a 13-foot birdie putt and asked Brooks for a read. "He had left a few decent birdie putts short," Brooks said. "I told him: "I'll read it if you're going to get it to the hole. Otherwise I'm not going to bother." " He did not care if Henry was put off by the remark. "The reality is, at that point we needed to start making birdies or we were going home," Brooks said, adding that he was no harder on Henry than he was on himself. I don't play to my own standards ever. Will Brooks's caddying catch on with other major winners? Love, who won the 1997 P.G.A. Championship, said, "In 10 years, if Billy Haas or one of the young guys wanted me to caddie for them, I'd do it." After their rounds, Woods's caddie, Joe LaCava, and Brooks shook hands. "It's great to see him out here," LaCava said. He laughed and added, "We don't want too many players caddying or pretty soon they'll all be like him."