Family's military background has helped mold Bud Cauley

Don’t expect Bud Cauley to ever be late for a tee time. It’s just not in his DNA.

Both his father Bill and his grandfather Billy were career Navy officers. So Cauley learned quickly that showing up on time wasn’t just a virtue, it was a requirement.

"If you say you're going to be there at six o'clock, you're going to be there at 5:45 or 5:50 -- the whole thing, you know, is, 'Early is on time and on time's late,'" he recalls. "So, I definitely remember those little things being important."

So were the shows of respect, the yes sirs and no sirs, that are part of Cauley’s vocabulary to this day. The discipline and organization he learned as the son and grandson of Navy divers also “rubbed off on me in a good way,” Cauley is quick to point out.

Even so, the 29-year-old Floridian didn’t consider going into the family business.

“I've always joked that I guess the Cauley men have put over 40 years in the military so we've kind of done enough,” he says. “I felt the freedom to go do something else. I was really fortunate that my parents and my dad, especially -- not that being in the military is a bad thing – but they wanted me to have the opportunity to do something else and to really do whatever I wanted.

“When I chose golf, they gave me every opportunity to go play and be able to get better and then eventually do it for a living now.”

Cauley started playing golf shortly after the family returned from Cuba where his dad was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. His sister Jessica was born there, but Cauley doesn’t remember much about living on the island since he was only 4 or 5 years old when they left.

Guam, though, is another story. Cauley moved to the U.S. territory when he was about 10 years old and lived on the tiny island in Micronesia until his early teens.

So, his memories of Guam are more vivid. Like that day an earthquake hit not long after the family moved onto the Naval base.

“My room was upstairs, and my mom was downstairs like in the kitchen or something and all the sudden I'm sitting in my room and the wall starts to shake,” Cauley recalls. “And I'm like, what? But it was kind of a light tremble and so I go to go downstairs to tell my mom. …

“And as I get halfway down the stairs, the whole, I mean it really, hit. The whole earthquake hit, and it almost threw me down the stairs.”

The magnitude of the earthquake didn’t register with Cauley at the time. But he does remember his school being closed for two weeks because officials weren’t sure the structure was sound.

“And then when we went back there were cracks going down the walls from where it had shook the building so hard,” Cauley says.

Venomous brown snakes on the island were another source of concern.

“I remember before we moved there all everyone talked about was the brown snake, like a poisonous snake, and the way they talked about it, you would think they were hanging in trees everywhere,” Cauley recalls.

He doesn’t remember ever seeing one of the snakes, though. But another kind of reptile made an impact on the family – quite literally.

“We're getting ready to go play outside and we're standing kind of under the doorway and a lizard fell from the doorway as it was going across and it hit my mom back in the back of the neck,” Cauley says. “She probably jumped 10 feet in the air and told us to come back in the house and we weren't allowed to play outside that day.

“She was so terrified of these snakes and now the lizard scared her about half to death. … I still remember that. It was pretty funny.”

Cauley played in some junior golf tournaments on Guam – and even traveled to California once to play in the junior worlds. When he was a teenager, the family returned to Jacksonville, Florida where his father was stationed first at Mayport and later at NAS Jax.

“So, we were there for a good, solid six years through high school,” Cauley says. “So, it was fun. I enjoyed traveling, being new places and then really as I've gotten older it's kind of an even cooler experience to tell people when someone mentions Guam or something like that so say you lived there.

“Not a lot of people can say that. I think it's really neat.”

Not surprisingly, Cauley, who played at Alabama and earned his TOUR card of the non-member earnings list in just eight starts, is a staunch supporter of military charities like Birdies for the Brave. He met with several Wounded Warriors being fit for Callaway golf clubs at the 3M Open this week.

“Growing up in the military was a big influence on me -- not only how much the people in the military sacrifice but the family,” Cauley says, speaking from experience. “Having to be away from your family is just the selfless job they do to give us the freedoms we have every day.

“So, I always knew that if I had the opportunity to be able to help people in the military in any capacity, it was something I wanted to do.”

Cauley also would dearly love to represent the United States in the Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup. He got a taste of international competition at the 2006 Junior Ryder Cup, when Tony Finau was one of his teammates, at Celtic Manor in Wales and the 2009 Walker Cup when he played with Rickie Fowler, Cameron Tringale and Brian Harman, among others, at Merion Golf Club.

“I feel like everyone says this, but you don't get that team atmosphere very often,” Cauley says. “Then to go out there and you're representing something bigger than yourself (is special).”

That he knows from experience.