A PGA Tour caddie switched players after 12 years and likely landed a 6-figure payday in his first event on the new bag

• Caddie Paul Tesori teamed up with 2022 Rookie of the Year Cameron Young for the first time at the Dell Match Play.
• In their first event together, the duo placed second, with Young taking home $2.2 million.

Caddie Paul Tesori picked a fantastic week to start carrying the bag of PGA Tour pro Cameron Young.

In the duo's first event together at last weekend's Dell Match Play, Young placed second after falling in the final match to Sam Burns, taking home $2.2 million for his five days of golf.

Tesori's journey to Young's bag was not a straight line.

For the past 12 years, Tesori had been partners with Webb Simpson, but the two announced earlier in March that they would be going their separate ways.

"I had more second and third and fourth and fifth thoughts than — it was so highly emotional," Tesori told Golf.com of the decision. "One of the sweetest yet saddest moments in the world was when we got done on Sunday and Webb and [his wife] Dowd were there. All five of their kids were there and then me and my wife and all of us sobbing uncontrollably."

While Simpson isn't turning in his Tour card any time soon, he is set to play a bit less, and Tesori said that he hopes to keep working until his youngest child is off to college. In their last event together, Simpson finished T7 as the Valspar Championship, Simpson's first top-10 finish since 2021.

Through Tesori's years of working with Simpson, he had grown to know Young, as both Young and Simpson attended Wake Forest. Young was the PGA Tour's Rookie of the Year in 2022, and will undoubtedly be keeping a schedule busy enough to please Tesori.

In their first outing together, Young and Tesori made their mark.

The Dell Match Play is unique in its format, as players can wind up playing seven rounds of golf over five days should they make it all the way to the final.

Young and Tesori started out hot, with Young carding a 3 on every hole of the front nine in his first match on Wednesday. He would eventually beat Davis Thompson 3 and 2.

"I don't think I could have done a whole lot better on that front nine," said Young of his first nine holes with Tesori. "I really didn't miss one."

Young would run the table through the group stage and continue winning all the way until the final. While he appeared to run out of gas in the championship match against Burns, Young still brought home the $2.2 million cash prize that came with second place.

The details of every golfer-caddie partnership on Tour are different, but a bit of insight from ESPN's Michael Collins offers an estimate of what Tesori might have made in his debut weekend on Young's bag.

"Every caddie gets a weekly paycheck, no matter where his player finishes," Collins said in a 2021 video for his show on ESPN+. "If the player misses the cut, the caddie still has to get a paycheck because the caddie pays for all of his own expenses — airfare, hotel, car, food, all of it."

"If the guy makes the cut, the standard is 10-7-5 — 10% for a win, 7% for a top 10, 5% for everything else," Collins said.

Assuming Tesori's agreement with Young is something similar to that, 7% of $2.2 million puts Tesori's payday at $154,000 for the weekend.

Pretty good for five days of work, even if two of those days were double rounds.

It's certainly a good note to start on, but given Young's talent, his and Tesori's journey to the top of leaderboards is only just beginning. Young finished in the top 3 at two of last year's four majors, but has still yet to take down the first win of his PGA Tour career.