An American Caddie in St. Andrews: Growing Up, Girls, and Looping on the Old Course

by Oliver Horovitz

  “You know . . . um . . . I could . . . possibly . . . train you guys.”

  Julia’s expression could light up a small village.

  “Really? Ohmigod, Ollie. That would be amazing! I don’t know how we could ever thank you!” Her eyes lock on mine. I hear harps . . . and flutes . . . and oboes . . . It’s as if the gates of heaven have swung open. Wide open.

  NINETEEN

  I just moved into my new flat at 123 North Street this week (thanks to Uncle Ken, who made three trips in his twenty-year-old red Vauxhall to transport my belongings). I’m already a big fan. The flat is huge, with high ceilings, large bay windows, and easy access to Broons, the bar next door. Equally cool, I’m sharing the flat with Greaves, as well as a caddie friend of ours named Gordon Archibald. Gordy is a slightly overweight twenty-two-year-old University of St. Andrews graduate with a baby face, a 0.8 handicap, and lots of Pringle sweaters.

  Gordy is on the couch when I stagger into the living room.

  “How’d it go today?”

  Gordy is still wearing his caddie gear. He is lying in an odd position—similar to how Julius Caesar might have lain while being fed grapes in ancient Rome. The TV is on, and I recognize the program, since Gordy watched it yesterday. It’s a puzzling game show in which people simply call in to guess a hidden number, and a bored-looking host takes the calls every seven minutes or so, announcing that they’ve guessed the wrong number. Gordy looks very entertained.

  “Yeah, it went well,” I say.

  “Cool.” Gordy looks back at the TV. “I think the number’s going to be seventeen,” he announces very seriously.

  “. . . Yeah, maybe.”

  I collapse onto the other couch, exhausted. Late double rounds are draining, and climbing the two flights of stairs just now seemed like scaling Kilimanjaro. I let out a long, low groan—one that in the animal kingdom signals either intense pain, or that you’re dying and your young need to go find help. Gordy looks over at me.

  “Where’s Greaves?”

  Greaves walks in. Instead of a regular greeting, he lets out a deep “FOOOOOOOAHHHHH!” It’s an extension of the regular golf course “Fore” shout, and it’s quickly becoming a battle cry for us younger caddies in town. I turn to Greaves.

  “How were your rounds?”

  “How was the bubonic plague?”

  Greaves takes off his shoes.

  “That bad?” Gordy asks.

  “My guy’s iron shots lit’rally varied by thirty yards each time; clubbing him was impossible.” Greaves opens a can of tuna fish and packet of low-fat cottage cheese that he’s brought home from Tesco. Greaves is a total health nut, which is funny, considering that he chain-smokes like a steam engine while caddying. He looks over at the TV. “I think the number’s going to be twelve.”

  “Mmmmm . . .” Gordy seems to admire the guess.

  After dinner, I leave my housemates watching the Big Brother housemates and escape to the Jubilee. Tonight, the call of the gorse gods is too strong. I have to play some golf. This often happens. No matter how tired I’m feeling, I always seem to get sucked back to the courses at night. They’re like an empty amusement park, with all the rides open and waiting. I bike to the Jube’s first tee, clubs on back, and join up with a jolly American tourist. Together, we cut around the course to get in nine holes. And for these two hours, I hit the shots that I try to get my golfers to hit. I take my own reads on putts. I practically giggle with glee as I break the cardinal rule of St. Andrews caddying and allow the flagstick to drop to the ground.

  At nightfall (eleven fifteen P.M.), I bid farewell to my two-hour friend, having never revealed that I’m a caddie; doing so always ends in my having to give advice on my playing partners’ every shot. I pedal back toward town. Halfway there, though, in the darkness, I hear the faint buzz of bagpipes. It’s coming from the middle of the Old’s eighteenth fairway. I follow the tune and find a crowd of fifty people gathered in a circle. They’re all golfers, probably here to play in a large charity event that’s on this week. In the middle of the circle stands a gaggle of twenty bagpipers, belting out “Amazing Grace.” It’s a bizarre scene. I join the circle, golf clubs still on my back, and, surrounded by fifty fanatical golfers—husbands and wives, fathers and sons, business partners and golf buddies—I listen to the bagpipes. The notes float up into the evening sky above us. I have a thought: This is better than Big Brother. As I daydream, a man next to me turns to a tuxedo-wearing friend.

  “They’re called Model Caddies,” I hear him say, breathing heavily.

  TWENTY

  “Ollie Horovitz and Nathan Gardner.”

  Nathan looks up from his newspaper (Scottish Sun, page 3, naked girl). He’s just finished telling the twelve of us who are currently shack-side about his favorite alternative porn websites. He groans. “Just us two caddies for four guys?”

  I start readying my bib. Don Stewart, a posh English thirty-nine-year-old caddie who reads Yeats and Voltaire before rounds, and should have been a philosophy professor instead of a caddie, announces, “Ah, the most enthusiastic caddie in the shack is out with the most switched-off caddie!” I’m secretly thrilled at this compliment. It’s also an accurate one for Nathan—to say that Gardner is switched off during rounds is to say the Atlantic Ocean is a little moist.

  It’s time to go, but before we leave, Don concludes moaning about his American golfer from this morning and the five-pound tip he received. Suddenly we hear an unfamiliar voice. “Don?” Everyone turns—an American golfer (Don’s) has wandered confusedly into the caddie shack, through a door left ajar. No one can believe it—golfers aren’t allowed in here. The low-tipping man walks to Don and presents him with a hat. He announces, “Here’s a little something extra for you; it’s from our course back home. Superb layout!” Don switches back instantly, Englishly, into full suck-up mode. “Oh, that’s very kind, sir! Thank you very much!” Don’s golfer beams a Santa Claus smile, replies, “Happy to do it!” He exits the shack, obviously very pleased with himself. The shack door closes, and perfectly on cue, polite Don whirls around and slams the hat into the garbage can, muttering, “Un-fucking-believable.” Everyone laughs. Gardner and I head to the tee.

  Nathan Gardner got his degree at the University of St. Andrews. When university ended, he moved to Edinburgh and got a job in finance. “Two years of being stuck in an office, listening to your boss. No thank you.” Nathan beat it back to the caddie shack, where he’d looped during university, and started caddying again. That was twelve years ago.

  “Jeeze Louise, I’m nervous!” my lady pipes.

  Our golfers are four women from Tennessee. Nathan does not appear happy about this. “Well, this is total scrap . . . ,” he announces to me on the first tee, with only marginal effort to lower his voice around our golfers. Nathan is wearing his housefly-looking sunglasses, plus our caddie knit hat with the normal fold tucked down, so that the hat now stands about twice its normal height on his head. He does this—I am told—specifically because the caddie masters hate it. I give my golfer her line off the first. She, like everyone else, bunts a weak drive down the fairway. We start walking as a group, and I hear from behind me, “Aye, this is really top-of-the-heap, prime A-1 scrap.” Nathan has officially switched off.

  Gardner is famous in the shack for his on-course antics. He will frequently make up names of Old Course topographical features for his unwary golfers. “That’s Henderson Hill,” he’ll say, pointing to a clump of grass and referencing our assistant caddie manager Ken Henderson. Photos will then be snapped in abundance. Other exciting points of interest can include Saunderson’s Creek (for caddie Dougie Saunderson, in place of Swilcan Burn), Dougie’s Dip (the drop-off behind 11 green), and Mackenzie’s Traverse (for caddie master Rick Mackenzie). On 18, to avoid snapping the required corny photo on Swilcan Bridge, Gardner has been known to walk away from Japanese golfers, toward the tiny maintenance bridge thirty feet downstream, and announce, “Sorry, sir, caddies aren’t allowed over the
main bridge.” Once Gardner actually took a group of Japanese golfers onto the maintenance bridge for their historic photo, telling them that this was Swilcan Bridge. Somewhere on a mantel in Tokyo, there proudly sits a picture of four golfers smiling brightly while standing on top of a temporary wooden service bridge, thirty feet from the actual Swilcan structure.

  “FOOOOOOAAAHHH!”

  Nathan has just screamed extra loudly at a trainee caddie and middle-aged golfer who have wandered haphazardly into our fifth fairway in search of their golf ball. The middle-aged golfer hits the deck, certain that a ball is bound for his cranium. Nathan just wants them to move left. All four women in our group are a little shocked. “Is it safe to hit now?” one asks meekly.

  “Aye, clang it out there,” Nathan replies disinterestedly, then turns to me. “Looks like I’ll be laying the coils of TNT now,” he announces brightly. Nathan is referring to “blowing up” our golfers, aka asking them for more money at the end of the round. It’s his trademark line, and whether he actually does this or not, Nathan will reference the necessity of “laying dynamite” (especially for horrible golfers) during the course of each round.

  I’m getting to know a lot of the guys in the shack now, and Nathan is definitely in the inner circle. My status as a returning caddie is earning me passage into this group—away from the trainees and novices. Today it’s granting me Nathan’s camaraderie against our golfers. And truthfully, this is kind of thrilling.

  Over the next few holes, while I futilely try to guide my golfer around pot bunkers, Nathan makes frequent trips to other fairways and opposite ends of the greens, to converse with other caddie groups, but mostly to complain about our women. As we walk, he holds his club high in the air at passing caddies. It’s inner-caddie code for “My round sucks, and my golfer is shit.” The club lift is frequently returned by other passing caddies—all unbeknownst to attached golfers. Nathan has a wry smile permanently etched on his face and a long drawn-out Scottish accent, always seemingly tinged with disbelief in his golfer’s ability to hit new lows of “scrappage.”

  Throughout the round, Nathan and I chat frequently. Nathan’s worldview, subscribed to faithfully, is that caddies are plagued by moronic golfers at every turn. On 10, in our golfers’ backswings, Nathan continues his view espousal. “I’ve been asked by my golfer if they’ll be using this turf for the British Open, or if they’ll be planting all new grass before the tournament,” he says. “I’ve had a golfer point out a fire hydrant behind seventeen green and ask me excitedly if that was Old Tom Morris’s grave. I’ve had a golfer ask me how many times the U.S. Open has been staged on the Old Course. I’ve even had a golfer in ’05, as we’re walking past the scoreboards and grandstands for the Open, ask me if some kind of championship is being played here. It’s just mind-bogglin’; you think people would do a bit a research before coming here . . . like if I was gonna go play Augusta, I might do a bit of readin’ up beforehand, so I that knew the Masters was played there, kinda thing.”

  On the eleventh tee box, we have a wait for the group ahead. Nathan continues: “Phil Lawrie had a boy on the New Course few years ago who was taking pictures everywhere. Bunkers . . . tee boxes . . . bushes . . . Phil cannae understand it. Then on eighteen, the guy asks, ‘So where’s the Swilcan Bridge?’ And Phil goes, ‘That’s on the Old Course, sir. This is the New Course you’re playing.’ Guy has nae idea what Phil’s talking about. He goes, ‘But this is St. Andrews, isn’t it?’ Ridiculous.”

  Nathan’s gut-wrenchingly funny, and I can easily commiserate with him—I’ve certainly had my share of perplexing tourist questions. But during this entire round, an uneasy thought has been circling me like a vulture. Now on 11, its full force hits me. Our golfers have paid 130 pounds each for their rounds today. This is their one chance to play the Old Course. Shouldn’t we caddies be, like, enriching their experience? Staring at our women chatting excitedly, it strikes me that every golfer in St. Andrews has come here on a kind of pilgrimage. For all of their inappropriate questions and lost balls and fanny packs, they need to be respected as observant golfer-worshippers. Has Nathan completely forgotten this? Or is it perhaps that after carrying someone else’s bag two rounds a day, seven days a week, for twelve years, you become numb to this? Perhaps, after years of semi-servitude to a richer class, you arrive unknowingly, overpoweringly, at resentment toward your golfer. Now in my second year on the Old, I’m not sure where I stand. Or in which direction I’m headed.

  “Hey, look!” Nathan’s woman jolts me out of my daydream. “Why is he holding the pin like that?” She’s looking toward the eighth green, where a caddie is vertically holding the flag above his head, fourteen feet in the air. It’s an expansion of the club lift, visible to most caddies in the area, and indicates a golfer beyond comprehensible levels of horrendousness. Nathan doesn’t miss a beat. “He’s probably alerting the group behind that they haven’t cleared the green so that they won’t hit.”

  There’s a pause. “Oh!” Nathan’s golfer accepts this. Nathan returns his gaze to the Eden Estuary, lost in thought.

  “You’d be surprised how often that happens,” he adds.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I’m in the Jubilee Course parking lot.

  It’s eight o’clock in the evening, and my two rounds are done for the day. Since then, I’ve showered, put on a freshly ironed golf shirt, and casually checked my hair in the mirror about four or five dozen times.

  Soon I hear the crunch of tires, and a blue Ford Fiesta rolls into the empty lot, pulling up at the curb. Four remarkably pretty girls get out, all sporting the height of pretty-girl golf attire. They’re nervously talking, giggling, and heading toward me. Julia waves.

  “Sorry we’re late!”

  Not a problem.

  Julia continues. “I thought I’d come along as well tonight, to get some training in myself!”

  “Well, the more the merrier!” I exclaim, instantly wishing I had said something less dorky.

  It’s evening number one of Model Caddie training. And the first batch of Model Caddies is here. I hand off my golf bag to a blonde named Emily. Emily is someone you would write songs about—long legs, curves that could cause coronaries, and a devastating smile. Tentatively, I show her how to use the bag’s double straps.

  “Just, that, arm through, you know, through that strap . . .”

  “This one?” Emily giggles as the other girls watch with amusement.

  “Uh, no, the other . . . yeah, that way, now slide your other hand through . . .”

  “Oh, like this . . .”

  “Yeah, and make sure the bag’s resting just above your bu— . . . um, your, bottom.”

  This strap lesson finished, the five of us move onto the Jubilee Course. I guess I should get started.

  “Now, the first thing is to find out your golfer’s handicap,” I say, standing on the first tee, surrounded by the girls.

  “What’s a handicap?”

  “That’s how good they are. The lower, the better.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, a fifteen-handicap is sort of like, pretty good, for the golfers who come here.”

  “What’s yours?” Emily asks.

  “Well . . . two.”

  Four mouths open in awe. This is going well.

  “Okay, so on each tee box, you want to describe the hole to them. On this first hole, for example, I’d say to my golfer, ‘Right, we’ve got a par four here—three hundred seventy-two yards. The ideal line off the tee is on that green bush down there.’”

  I hit a tee shot (pushed nervously right, but the girls don’t notice), and we all start walking down the fairway. It’s weird to be vocalizing how to caddie, but I’m trying. As we walk the fairways together, I show the girls how to pace off distances. How to select clubs. How to carry my bag (they all want a turn carrying it). The time passes in a blur. I don’t think I’ve ever even been alone with four girls before, let alone on a golf course with four beautiful models. I should be totally
screwing everything up right now. But somehow I’m not. Somehow, because I’m in so far over my head, I actually forget to be nervous. In fact, to my amazement, I do well. I make jokes. I tell my best caddie stories. I act cool (sort of). As the sun’s rays stretch out over the orange sky, the girls listen attentively, hanging on my words. They giggle. They rake sand traps. This is the best Tuesday evening of my life.

  Two hours later, we all gather back in the parking lot.

  “Ollie, that was so unbelievably helpful.”

  There’s a glow permanently etched on my face (either happiness or sunburn, or both). Julia continues.

  “To say thanks, we’re all taking you out for drinks now, Ollie. Our treat.”

  Emily adds, understandingly, “That is, of course, if you’re not too ti—”

  “No, I can do that!”

  * * *

  Broons is relatively empty this Wednesday night.

  We roll in, and it’s like we own the place.

  “It’s the golf dance!” Emily and Lorna announce, interspersing sexy grinding dance moves with unimaginably cute golf swings and overly dramatic ball watching. Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” blasts from the overhead speakers.

  “Here’s the caddie move!” Lauren replies, and jumps up to gyratingly fake-read a putt. “How does that look, Ollie?”

  She repeats, “Ollie?”

  I am sitting at our table, in a zombielike state. I am unable to move or employ basic methods of human communication. I am mesmerized by what is happening in front of me, and I’m not actually 100 percent sure I’m awake. I force myself to say something back to Lauren.

  “Uh, it looks . . . um . . . you know . . . k-keep going.”

  Emily calls to me. “Come on, Ollie!”

  Oh my God. They’re all motioning for me to dance with them. And my dance moves resemble a flounder flopping on a fishing boat. But I snap into action. Flounder go-time. When I reach the girls, Lauren grabs me, pulls me up close, and starts grinding with me. Emily starts dancing with me from behind. Lorna slides behind Emily and tousles my hair. It’s a Model Caddie sandwich. The girls dip and grind to the bass beats. They press against me, giggling, while Sean Paul waxes poetic.