June 8, 2021 | BY AAGD STAFF
While golfing icon Tiger Woods resumes his in-home recovery from the Southern California SUV accident, his caddie, Joe LaCava, is making a return to professional golf this week. On Woods’ bag for his 2019 Masters win, LaCava will now be seen at the Principal Charity Classic in Des Moines, this week caddying for Fred Couples.
LaCava made several statement to TennisWorldUSA:
“Yeah, loopin for Fred in Des Moines. Actually eating pasta watching hockey with him right now. Like nothing has changed 10 years later! Would kill to be working for TW in Columbus. Of course I miss it.
“Love Fred like a brother” Alena Sharp is a 16-year LPGA Tour veteran and Olympic athlete from Canada. He wrote an article for the LPGA web site. “I’ve been married to my wife Sarah Bowman, who is also my caddie, since November of 2020 and our union is more accepted now than at any point in history.”
“People view us now as married people. We’re the couple, just like any other. That’s a big jump from just a few years ago and lightyears from where society was when I was a kid. I’m 40 now and have been on the LPGA Tour for 16 years.
LaCava admitted to TennisWorlsUSA that was he was a rookie, “my friends and family knew that I was gay. But it wasn’t something that I publicized. I didn’t want to alienate any potential sponsors and didn’t want to put any of my existing sponsors in an awkward spot.”
LaCave also shared with the publication that he wasn’t “closeted”: “I just lived my life quietly, keeping my orientation out of the public eye. Even that was better than the way society viewed us when I was young. I noticed when I was 15 -years-old that I was finding women more attractive than men.”
He continued, “I tried not to think about it, but it was always there. My last year of junior golf, when I was 17, I realized it more. It’s hard because you’re a kid and having feelings that you don’t understand. But who can you tell? I was raised Catholic where the teachings were clear: It is a sin.”
LaCava revealed that his grandparents and parents went to Mass and followed the precepts of their faith, so he was unable to confide in them. “I already knew what the priests would say. And this isn’t exactly a conversation that you have with teenaged friends,” he told TennisWorldUSA.com.
When LaCava headed off to college he shared that his confusion excelled to the point where he was “really confused because I was dating men and afraid to date a woman. I knew I wanted to; I knew by then that I was strongly attracted to women, but at that time there was an inherent fear. A fear of rejection; a fear of discrimination; a fear of being shut out and closed off from the relationships that mattered most to me at the time,” he told TennisWorldUSA.com.
“And there was, at times, a palpable fear of physical harm. There were still parts of the United States and Canada where you could be assaulted because of your orientation. So, in addition to all the other things a college freshman goes through, I battled all those questions, feeling, and fears”
