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Golf Caddies

Are carts really replacing the long tradition of caddies?
July 2006

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Golf Caddies

words by > Todd Pitock

Caddies di Shackled

*Caddies don’t just carry golf bags, they carry a long golf tradition—so where have they all gone?

In his day, my father was a pretty good golfer, and many of his warmest memories involve his longtime caddie, Muscles. Muscles, whose real name my father gazes toward the heavens to remember (“Eddie something”), worked in a correctional facility near Trenton, New Jersey, and would caddie at a country club in Philadelphia’s northern suburbs on summer afternoons and weekends.

One particular Sunday when my father was playing for the club championship—his third attempt after his opponents sunk unlikely putts to win the previous two—Muscles didn’t show up. My father went off, feeling like the Lone Ranger without Tonto, until some time after the match started, Muscles appeared, dashing across several fairways until he caught up, breathless, and seized my father’s bag from whoever had stepped in for him. For the rest of the match, he was uncharacteristically solemn, until the eighteenth hole, when my father drained a long putt for a championship-winning birdie.

“That’s it!” Muscles shouted. “That’s it! That’s why I was late! That’s why I was late! And it worked. I was in the church praying for you to make the putt!”

Genuine affection probably inspired his religious fervor, but Muscles’ excitement may have also had to do with money, since he got 15 percent of the winnings, which in those heady days could run to several thousand bucks. Muscles caddied exclusively for my father all season—impressive in a few ways, not least that with a wife, three kids and a law practice, my father managed to play so much golf.

It was, as my father often says, a different era. For the amateur duffer, it was no doubt a better one—and caddies, I suspect, were one of the reasons why.

Over the years it has become harder to find guys like Muscles on the links. Back when caddies were a fixture of golf, caddying had an honored blue-collar role in a largely white-collar game.

To caddie was to learn the game in its totality, to know the paths to hazard and glory, and what each player needed when poised on the edge of one or the other. It was a career for some, an apprenticeship for others, including such legends as Byron Nelson and Gene Sarazen. Caddies helped give a pallid sport its blush.

Of the many—and mostly forgettable—movies about golf, the one everyone remembers is Caddyshack.

Over the past two decades, though, caddies in America have tracked the downwardly mobile career path of milkmen and typewriter repairmen. Management and golf pros discovered carts were engines of profit that didn’t carry the baggage of tax or labor issues. Carts didn’t have attitude and always showed up for work. They were meant to speed up the game, which addressed players’ time pressures and would also allow courses to get in more rounds in a day.

By 2002, less than 40 percent of private clubs had caddie programs. And though there’s no data on daily-fee or resort courses, observers agree that fewer than 10 percent offer them.

The problem is that carts backfired on the game. Golf gurus have been gathering to work out why growth in the sport hasn’t been faster. Are carts one of the game’s problems? On an even mildly popular course, cart-path-only and 90-degree rules have contributed to excruciatingly slow rounds, distorting the game’s rhythm into a jerky, hurry-up-and-wait affair. You hit your ball, then wait for the group in front of you to hit or putt out.

Caddies are still the norm elsewhere. In much of Asia, they’re often female. China, in particular, has adopted this ultimate capitalist symbol of one person toting another’s bags.

“If you never played with a caddie, you never really played the game,” says Dennis Cone, who incorporated the Professional Caddie Association (PCA) in 1997 with 43 members to preserve, protect and promote the field. “In its purest form, golf is all about the walk, visualizing the shot, getting the focus. You have someone to assist you so that your mind is in that mode without all the running around and conversation. It’s not just reading the green, it’s the experience overall.

A good caddie takes strokes off your game.”

The PCA provides training and benefits, and its certification is ostensibly a quality seal of approval. More than 9,000 caddies have taken its course. It has a Caddie Hall of Fame and its own anthem, “Five Feet Away.” The song, inspired by the late Bruce Edwards, Tom Watson’s longtime caddie who died in 2004 from ALS, was first sung at the 2006 PGA Championships by singer Michael Bolton, an avid golfer who wanted to pay homage to his own longtime caddie, who also died in 2004.

According to the few resorts that offer walking and forecaddies, players of all levels like them. The caddie industry, if you can call it that, puts forth the most compelling argument of all for bringing them back: increased profits, the very reason the courses eliminated caddies to begin with. Happy golfers play more, and they are often willing to pay more as well.

“What can a facility do that will improve the pace of play, alleviate cart restrictions and improve the experience for just $20 more a round?” asks Michael Granuzzo, founder of Caddiemaster Enterprises, Inc., a Pinehurst, North Carolina, company that provides caddie programs for clubs and resorts. “You can utilize that [added value] to drive rates and create a memorable experience.”

There is, finally, one more reason for caddies, which is that there are no good cart stories. Carts don’t have names like “Muscles.”

The caddie code, “Show up, shut up and keep up,” is just the kind of terse, self-effacing world view you’d expect. But they don’t just carry the bags, wipe clubs and read greens. They make quick studies of their players and learn when to speak, when not to speak, and what to say when words are required. The really loyal caddies even go to church and pray for you and, decades later, the players who loved them still sing their praises.

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