Bond of Brothers

Jeremy  Wu was making the almost six-hour drive from his home in Medford, Ore., to Napa Valley last September for the first PGA Tour of the all-important fall portion of the schedule. He had a job—to caddie for his older brother, Dylan, a PGA Tour member.

While at an In-N-Out in Redding, Calif., the favorite fast-food stop of the Wu brothers, Jeremy received the news he had been dreading. "The doctor called,” his mother, Julie, said. “You have cancer. You need to come home." 

Jeremy wasn't sure what to do. Part of him wanted to continue the drive, caddie as he had done for the past three years, and do whatever he could to get the news out of his mind. Dylan, who was on a plane to Napa when he got word, texted: "You have to go home. I can't have you on the bag, knowing you should be home." 

Ultimately, Jeremy turned around and headed home to an unknown future. Long solo drives provide plenty of time for reflection. This one was especially tough. “I was thinking about Dylan,” Jeremy says. “I wanted to be there." He doesn't remember much about the drive, but he knew this much: His life was about to change.

Jeremy had become an outstanding caddie and prided himself on his work ethic. He was 27 and in good shape. He walked nearly 50 miles a week carrying a staff bag weighing 35 pounds. Yet late last season, he was much more tired than usual. Never one to take a nap, Jeremy was napping often after rounds. 

He and Dylan didn't discuss it. Jeremy didn't want to distract his brother from the task at hand and continued to brush off the fatigue as nothing more than the effects of a grueling job. Tour caddies have aches and pains; Jeremy believed it was nothing more than that. 

A missed cut at the last regular-season event of 2024, the Wyndham Championship, left Dylan 119th in points. It meant a trip to the Fall Series, where he would have to fight to keep his card. With six weeks off before the event in Napa, Jeremy took a trip to Germany with Julie.

While there, he felt tightness in his chest and shortness of breath. He chalked it up to too much German beer. Or, at worst, maybe asthma. However, the discomfort got so bad that the night he returned home, Julie persuaded him to go to an urgent care facility. He drove himself, convinced the visit would turn up something minor. However, upon hearing the symptoms, the doctor grew concerned and ordered an X-ray of Jeremy’s chest. 

The doctor’s words hit like a brick: "There is a mass in your right lung. You need to get to the ER." 

Dylan was already on a plane to Medford for a sponsor outing. After landing around midnight, he rushed to see his brother in the hospital. A biopsy was scheduled for the following morning. The start of the Napa event was eight days away, but the family was anxiously awaiting the results of the biopsy. 

So on Sunday, Jeremy started the six-hour drive to Napa. Dylan was fighting to keep his card; Jeremy needed to be on the bag. Julie, meanwhile, constantly checked the online medical portal for the biopsy results. 

Medford had been home to the Wu brothers for their entire lives, and a few years ago, in the city that sits an hour north of the California border, the Heimann Cancer Center, an 80,000-square-foot facility, opened. Julie remembers driving by the building as it was under construction. One day, on her way home from work, she discussed it with Jeremy and Dylan's dad, Kevin. "I remember telling him what a beautiful building it was,” she says, “and how badly I hoped that no one in our family ever had to use it." 

When she logged into the portal on that Sunday, the words jumped off the screen: Hodgkin's lymphoma. Her son had cancer. She called Jeremy, who was two hours down the road. 

Even as he tried to process the news, Jeremy’s attention turned to finding the right caddie for Dylan in Napa. He turned to one of his mentors, Ryan Jamison. At his lowest moment, Jeremy was on the phone with Jamison, discussing Dylan's stock yardages and what snacks he liked in the bag. 

Jeremy then talked with his oncologist, and the outlook was encouraging. There would be months of chemotherapy, but he was young and his heart was in good condition. 

Julie says there were tears early on, but the family turned to facing the challenge head-on. Jeremy moved back in with his parents, and together they would beat this.

Until the shocking news, the focus of the Wu family was always on golf. Dylan was the top-ranked junior in Oregon. He played collegiately at Northwestern for the legendary Pat Goss, who remains Wu's swing coach. Wu flourished, leading the Wildcats in scoring average in each of his four seasons. He earned many accolades, including All-Big Ten and second-team All-America honors. He turned pro after the 2018 season. 

Wu advanced to the final stage of Q school after turning pro and earned conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour for 2019. Jeremy, who was studying finance at Valparaiso at the time, caddied for Dylan at all three stages. 

Because of his conditional status, Dylan didn’t get his first Korn Ferry start until May 2019. He missed the cut, but he made the most of his next start a month later, losing in a playoff. That guaranteed him status for the rest of the season, and he finished 72nd in points, retaining his full card for 2020. 

Dylan's 2020 season began with a runner-finish in the Bahamas and started a streak of six consecutive made cuts, including a top-five showing in Mexico. The following week, Covid shut down the world, and the Korn Ferry Tour went on a three-month hiatus. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Dylan, who was playing the best golf of his life. 

The tour picked up again in June, and Dylan missed the cut in the first event. The 2020 portion of the Covid super season ended with him missing the cut in seven of the last eight events. Because of his struggles, Dylan considered bringing on Jeremy as his full-time caddie. In 2021, Dylan qualified for the U.S. Open, and Jeremy was there to support his brother. For the first time, the pair discussed Jeremy taking over the bag. At the time Jeremy was working remotely as an accountant for Ernst and Young

"I thought it was where I was supposed to be, but if I'm being honest, I hated it," Jeremy says. He wasn't on the bag for the Open, but it was decided he would come on board the following week at the Korn Ferry stop in Maine. 

Dylan agreed to pay his brother’s expenses and give him a percentage of his winnings if he made the cut. 

That didn’t work out too well. "Maine was one of the most expensive weeks of the year,” Dylan says, “and Jeremy ate lobster every night. I had to remind him we were still on the Korn Ferry Tour." Still, Dylan finished T-15. 

Three weeks later, in Springfield, Mo., Dylan opened with a 68 and followed with scorching rounds of 65-63-65 to earn his first professional win. As a result, he locked up his PGA Tour card for 2022. However, tension was building between the Wu brothers. 

Jeremy was just carrying the bag, not earning his keep as a caddie. Dylan expected more. "I remember with three or four holes to go in Springfield, we were on a par-3, and he wasn't doing anything,” Dylan says. “Get me a yardage. Do something. His notes were terrible. He was basically useless." 

As Dylan prepared for the 2022 PGA Tour season, he and Jeremy discussed the expectations of the job. Dylan needed a caddie, not just a bag carrier, and to his credit, Dylan says Jeremy took the conversation to heart. "He worked hard at it," Dylan says. 

Jeremy dove into learning the profession. He befriended Lance Bennett, who now caddies for Tiger Woods, along with other veterans like Jamison and Jon Yarrarough. Jeremy walked courses with them before events, looked at their notes, studied their preparation, and even stayed with them, picking their brains all the while. 

Dylan's 2022 season produced some solid finishes but the bumps in the road most rookies face. In 2023, the pair found their footing. A top 10 at the Honda was the second event in a run of seven consecutive made cuts. There was a top-five finish at the 3M, his first on the PGA Tour, and he would finish 86th in points. 

However, the success didn’t come without drama. At the Players Championship, the most lucrative event on the PGA Tour, Dylan was T-9 with eight holes to play. On the tricky par-5 11th hole, the pair discussed where to lay up. 

What happened next depends on which brother you talk to. A poor layup led to a bogey. Dylan then played the last seven holes in 3 over and finished T-35. 

Heated words were exchanged. "Why do I listen to you?" Dylan said. Jeremy fired back, saying his brother had hit a terrible shot. Dylan fired Jeremy. Or Jeremy quit. It wasn’t the first time this happened, and it wouldn’t be the last. But as was often the case, the feuding was short-lived.  "He has quit, or I have fired him so many times, I can't count," Dylan says.

Outside of scoring on that Sunday at TPC Sawgrass, the two discussed what happened. “I tend to get over it more quickly than he does,” Dylan says. They ironed out their differences. Again, depending on who you talk to, Dylan rehired Jeremy. Or Jeremy agreed to come back after quitting. 

They point to moments such as this as a reason why they are such a good team. "We say what we want to each other,” Dylan says. “With other caddies, you hold it in sometimes.” Jeremy agreed, adding, "I am comfortable telling him what I think; he doesn't always have to like it." The caddie/player relationship is complicated and can even be delicate. Add in that your caddie is your brother, and the layers run even deeper. 

The 2024 season started off solid yet again for Dylan and included a streak in which he made seven consecutive cuts, culminating with a T-15 at the Myrtle Beach Classic. A month later, at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, the Wu brothers got their first top 10 of the season, but along the way, Dylan hit a speed bump in what would be a year filled with them. 

As Dylan’s swing coach, Pat Goss had been on the road at least once every four weeks with his student. However, last June, Goss accepted the interim athletic director job at Northwestern, meaning he couldn’t keep traveling. The news hit hard, but it was nothing compared to the bombshell that dropped a couple of months later. 

Dylan called the week in Napa "a shit show." On Friday, he was hovering around the cutline, but then he double-bogeyed the par-3 11th. He missed Jeremy in moments like this. Despite being greenside in two on both par-5s coming in, Dylan failed to capitalize. He made par on both and missed the cut by two. 

He called Jeremy after both rounds, a ritual that would become their routine. They discussed the round, and they avoided talking about the cancer for the most part. The calls helped Jeremy feel involved and helped Dylan break down the round. 

Jeremy started his chemotherapy the following week. Each Thursday, he heads to the Heimann Cancer Center. As he goes through the treatments, he is able to stay locked in on Dylan's rounds. The days that follow treatment are a bit tougher. Jeremy is tired and sleeps often. Between naps, he grabs his phone and follows every shot in Dylan's round. 

"I know the events that didn't have a shot tracker killed him," Dylan says. 

Heading into the Sanderson Farms, his second event in the fall, Dylan sat 122nd in points. With the top 125 players keeping their cards, making the cut was vital. He opened with a three-under 69 and when he turned in 4-under 32 on Friday, he appeared to be in good shape to play the weekend. Then he missed the green at 10 and made bogey. He missed a six-foot par putt at 12. While quick to point out the caddies who have worked for him were great, they weren't his brother. He missed Jeremy. He made two more bogeys coming home and missed the cut by three. His card was slipping away. 

The rest of the fall didn't go any better. Despite an encouraging T-14 finish in Mexico, Dylan's chances to keep his full card ended after a frustrating second round at the last event, the RSM. After opening with a 68, Dylan started the second round with a double bogey and followed it up with another bogey. He missed the cut and finished 132nd in points. 

Five minutes after leaving the scoring tent, Dylan made a phone call—to Jeremy, of course. He vented about being on the bad end of the draw. Jeremy mostly listened. He may have been across the country, but he was still caddying. 

To complicate matters, Dylan and his agent forgot to sign up for the final stage of Q school. Any chance to retain his full card was gone. 

Jeremy continued his chemo, and although he lost his hair and some weight, the outlook remains encouraging. You aren’t declared cancer-free until you have five years of clean scans, but Jeremy will have his last chemo treatment in February.  

The talks between the brothers have turned to his return on the bag. Dylan looks forward to that day. "He knows what I need,” he says. “I probably took that for granted." 

Dylan got into this week's Farmers Insurance Open on his conditional number. Jeremy will be at Torrey Pines, too, as he and Julie drove down from Medford. Although Jeremy won't be on the bag, he will be there to support his brother. His presence alone will return some normalcy to a tournament week. 

Jeremy isn't sure when he’ll be back on the bag. But this much we know: Two brothers look forward to the day they can fight again on the golf course.

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