I think about this for two seconds. About Rick. And the caddies. And how insanely hard that’s going to be.
“Absolutely no problem.”
“Great! Really great. That’s . . . Hey, Alfred!” Robb calls outside to Alfred Guzzetti, the wise white-haired patriarch of Harvard’s film department, who has just wandered by Robb’s door.
Alfred pokes his head in. “Yes?”
“Listen to this. Ollie’s going to be making a documentary this summer about the Old Course caddies in St. Andrews.”
Alfred lights up. “Oh! I see,” he says. “That sounds excellent!”
I smile brightly. And behind my smile, there’s a single thought: How the hell am I going to deliver this?
• • •
They call sophomore year the “sophomore slump.” But so far, it ain’t bad. My roommates and I have moved into Eliot House, an idyllic dorm along the Charles River (where the crew team rows daily, at five A.M.). Eliot House is like a Winslow Homer painting crossed with a Wordsworth poem, on a heavy dose of Zoloft. Students lie on blankets in the inner garden reading their schoolbooks and eat lunch on the white marble veranda. Each spring, there’s a Great Gatsby–style ball called the Fete, featuring a live jazz band and chocolate fountains. Leonard Bernstein lived here when he was a student. Also James Joyce’s grandson. So did Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, although that’s less widely publicized.
It’s been seven months since I left St. Andrews, but it feels longer. Like, half a century longer. Truthfully, St. Andrews has never felt farther away. The Dunvegan and the Pilmour Hotel, the putting green behind the caddie shack, Margaret Squires’s bookshop, and Uncle Ken’s kitchen—they all feel like Peter Pan’s Neverland . . . a place that maybe, just maybe, never actually existed.
Nothing feels totally real right now, as I dial the caddie shack from my Eliot House dorm room.
There’s a ring, then two UK-ringtone rings. Then Rick picks up.
“Caddie department. Rick Mackenzie speaking.”
I feel a shiver of dread race down my spine. And then I feel my hands begin to shake. And then, with the same level of bravery I usually display in front of Rick . . . I hang up the phone.
Well, that went great. I take some deep, wheezing breaths to calm myself down. Then, hands still shaking, I redial.
“Caddie department, Rick Macken—”
“Rick! Hi! It’s, uh, Ollie Horovitz!”
I’ve spoken. I guess I can’t hang up again now.
“Mmmmmm . . . hello there, Ollie. Are you coming back this summer?”
“Yes, definitely, Rick! I can’t wait! But, I . . . I have a question for you.”
There’s a pause on the other end. “What’s that?”
“Well, I have this little thing I want to do for my film class. It’s nothing really, just a short documentary about the caddies.”
“A short what?”
“Uhhhh . . . a documentary, a very small little video, just—”
“You’re making this for television?”
“No! Noooo . . . just my film class. I’m a film major at university now, Rick. This is a requirement for my degree.” I stammer away, trying to think of how I can relax Rick. “It’s just going to be seen by the class.”
“And it would focus on what?”
I consider this for a second.
“The romance of caddying. And the problems of being an effective caddie master.”
“Hmmmm . . .”
I keep at it. “Obviously I’ll be caddying full-time, Rick, and I’d only film when I was finished for the day, or before caddie rounds. But it’s really important for my film degree . . .”
I wait for Rick to say something. When he doesn’t, I add meekly:
“So . . . what do you think?”
There’s a long pause on the line. And then Rick delivers his final verdict on my summer.
“Well . . . I suppose I can make that work.”
THIRTY
“The use of approved portable electronic devices is now permitted.”
Our head flight attendant—a tall man with a crisp Continental vest and excessively floral tie—is working the intercom.
“Ladies, gentlemen, good morning. I mean, uh, good evening . . .” (He’s tired.) “Drink service will begin soon, followed by dinner. There will also be a light snack as we approach the United Kingdom. For now, though, we’d like you to sit back, relax, and enjoy this six-hour, sixteen-minute flight over to Edinburgh, Scotland.”
I look about the cabin from my seat, 8C. All around me are older guys dressed in full golf attire—golf shirts, golf vests, Titleist hats—as if they might all be called upon to hit emergency bunker shots while on board our flight. One sixty-year-old guy walks past me to the bathroom wearing a Titleist backpack. I didn’t know Titleist made backpacks.
“Would you like something to drink?”
A friendly-looking stewardess is peering down at me. Even though I’m twenty years old and look seventeen, it’s worth a shot.
“Sure, can I have a beer?”
The stewardess smiles. “Of course, honey, what would you like?”
Count it. Our plane is pointing toward Scotland; all alcohol rules are out the window.
“Do you have Belhaven Best?” I ask brightly.
“Uh, no.”
“Tennent’s? Stella?”
Her smile fades. “Budweiser. Or Coors Light.” We’re not in Scotland yet.
Around us, the interior of our cabin (decked out in a soothing toddler blue) bounces and pitches around with just enough turbulence to remind me that yes, I am still thirty-six thousand fucking feet up in a shaking airplane.
“Budweiser, thanks.”
The stewardess sets the can down, moves to the next row. I take a sip, glancing across the aisle to my right, where a middle-aged American lady with tartan socks is eagerly filling out a workbook called The Super-Colossal Book of Sudoku. The dorkiness factor on board is high tonight.
I should get some sleep. I press the seat-back button on my armrest and accidentally slam my seat back into the knees of the seventy-year-old man behind me. He lets out a cry of pain that is very earnest and very loud. I apologize—ignoring the glares from Sudoku lady (I’ve decided I dislike her anyway)—and readjust my seat. Up by the galley, the head flight attendant is beginning to relax. I hear him telling another attendant how he met his wife (also a flight attendant) three years ago on a New York–to–London leg. I put on my eyeshade. The hiss of our engine has turned more gentle now—a soft purr in the cocoon of our cabin. As I settle back in my seat, my thoughts fly to St. Andrews. My old friends are welcoming me back.
And then my thoughts darken. I remember that I am obliged to film a caddie documentary before the end of the summer, or I possibly won’t get my film degree. I don’t know what I was thinking when I pitched the idea to my film-department professors, but I did—and they loved it. And the caddies will hate it. And Rick Mackenzie will be an unmovable obstacle. Guaranteed.
Under the eyeshade, I have a headache.
• • •
There’s something about your arrival into St. Andrews. On the bus from Leuchars Station, the homecoming happens in stages. It begins with the outermost reaches of the St. Andrews Links, when farms and hay fields suddenly give way to the fifteenth tee of the Eden Course and you are instantly seeing locals striking with 5-irons. Excitement builds as you speed past the driving range and then the back side of the Old Course Hotel. And then suddenly you are clear of the hotel, beyond the playing fields, and boom, you are staring right down the eighteenth fairway, at the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse, and stately Hamilton Hall, and Swilcan Bridge, and the final sloping green, and there, in the very center of it all, are the caddies, leading golfers down the first fairway, on rounds much like rounds in the year 1520 . . . and when you see this, when you take it all in, it’s as if time has stood still since your last visit, as if life here has just rolled along unchanged inside a Scottish snow globe, untouche
d by the intervening period of dramas in your life and in the world. Just golf and divots and clouds and sky. And as I stare out this window now, down the first and eighteenth fairway, at caddies that no one on my bus knows I recognize, at a town where almost all my small teenage victories have played out, it’s no different. I’m here, and my golf clubs are here, and a whole glorious summer now stretches out in front of me . . . and as I keep looking out the window, I realize that I am crying.
* * *
Ten minutes later, after forgetting that cars drive on the left side of the road (and narrowly avoiding three serious collisions with tiny Vauxhalls), I arrive on the doorstep of 4 Howard Place—oversized suitcase, golf case, backpack, and camera bag strewn haphazardly on the sidewalk behind me. I press the doorbell. The same ring bounces around the house.
Henry answers the door.
“By golly! It’s the American lad!”
Henry’s wearing a dress shirt and tie, a beige sweater, and his customary tweed coat and cap. He ushers me in and begins briefing me as if we’re receiving cannon fire from the trenches.
“Ken’s told me to wait for you ’ere. The local shops are all out of rock buns, so he’s off to Dairsie to find some for you. Should be home in an hour.”
Only Uncle Ken would drive all the way to Dairsie to get me a rock bun. Only Henry would stand guard for him. I smile and make two labored trips back outside to bring in my bags and the twenty-five pounds of film equipment, dumping everything in the hallway. I’m exhausted. Henry leads me into the living room, where he turns, very seriously, to other matters of business.
“I hear you lot been gettin’ some torrential rain this month. It’s in all the papers.”
“Oh right, well, those are in the Midwest.”
“Seventeen inches, in some parts. Terrible business, these rains.”
Henry shakes his head gravely.
“It’s actually been pretty nice in Boston,” I offer.
“Oh aye?”
Henry is obviously very excited to see me, and to get full reports from America. And I’m excited to see him. The only thing is, the heating is on extremely high in this living room (Uncle Ken always has the furnace on at full blast, even in summer), and I haven’t slept in nineteen hours. As the minutes pass and Henry updates me on gardeners’ club inventories, I become sleepier and sleepier. I sink deep into the sofa cushions.
“The marigolds are putting on a great show over by the Bute.”
“Mmmmm . . .”
“And the wee pansies are really shooting up now.”
“Ahhhh . . .”
My answers transition from sensible replies, to murmured sounds, to occasional head nods, to very occasional head nods. Until suddenly, I am not hearing Henry, or seeing Henry, and . . .
Uncle Ken’s giggle wakes me.
“Hello hello! Hee hee hee!”
How long has it been? I look at the clock. I’ve been asleep for five and a half hours. Off to my side, Henry is stretched out in Uncle Ken’s easy chair, watching golf on TV. I’m in eighty-five-year-old-hangout land.
“We didn’t want to disturb you, Oliver, but I think you should go upstairs and lie down for a bit.”
Ninety-one percent of my brain is still asleep. This seems like a good idea.
“Yeah.”
“But first, come outside and have a quick look round the garden. Oh, and your rock bun is on the table.”
I smile and tell Uncle Ken, “Okay.”
I don’t tell Uncle Ken that I’ve been waiting to hear him say that for the last nine months.
• • •
Two days pass. And St. Andrews is buzzing with the start of summer. Along the streets, packs of fourth-year giggling girls carry buckets of water, racing to soak their friends upon completing their final exams as university students (it’s a St. Andrews tradition—years ago, champagne was used, and social status was measured by the quality of the champagne, with snobs tossing Bollinger).
Up at Uncle Ken’s, I’m all moved in. My clothes are unpacked. My golf clubs are unpacked. And my camera equipment is, I suppose, also unpacked (this was done, slowly, last night, with all the eagerness of a captured spy unwrapping his blue suicide pill). Now all film essentials are laid out in neat piles on my bed. I’ve inspected the camera, the shotgun microphone, the lavalier clip-on microphone, the headphones, the tripod, the four Sony camera batteries, the battery-charging unit, the thirty-five Sony MiniDV tapes, checking them all for in-flight damage. Everything’s perfect. My confidence level, meanwhile, has more dings in it than the Road Hole shed by the seventeenth tee box. I’m terrified about how Rick and the caddies will take to the documentary. And I can’t stop thinking about the high expectations I’ve set back at Harvard. For the past month, I’ve pitched the idea (perhaps a tad overenthusiastically) to everyone in Harvard’s film department. A few of my professors bragged to golfer friends that their student was making a caddie doc on the Old. This was all bonny in the safety of Harvard Yard, three thousand confidence-striking miles from St. Andrews. But now I’m actually here. Now this thing is real. Now I’ll have to shoot this film.
• • •
“FOOOAAHHHHH!”
A blue Mini speeds past me, the passenger window cranked open. Two caddies wave out at me and honk.
“Need a caddie?” the guy in the passenger seat, Jamie Patterson, yells out the window.
“I can’t afford you!” I yell back.
“No one cannnn!” Jamie cackles evilly as the car speeds away.
I keep walking.
It’s my first day back on the links. I’m trudging down North Street, toward the shack. And simultaneously, I’m having the same winning thoughts as on opening day last year. First round back. Forgotten everything. About to make a fool of yourself. I pass the Dunvegan. Pass 1 Golf Place. Pass the Quarto Bookshop. As I walk, I obsessively recheck all caddie materials, to make sure everything’s in order. Caddie yardage book. Caddie towel. Chewing gum to offer other caddies in the group. I pass the back side of the R & A, beside two club porters smoking cigarettes, and hesitate for a moment before rounding the corner. On the other side of the building lies my third caddie season, and an entire film I have to shoot . . . which no one knows anything about. Once I turn the corner, there’s no going back.
I turn the corner.
Outside the shack, I see an ocean of torn blue rain pants and faded blue caddie bibs. The shack is out in force this morning. Nervously, I wander down the path. All the caddies turn.
“Ollie!” Alec Howie shouts, and breaks into a smile.
“The boy is back,” Dougie Saunderson calls out.
“Ach, not another body doon at the shack!” Nathan Gardner shouts, grinning.
I arrive at the window, suddenly relaxed, as other caddies now—John Rimmer, Gordon Smith, Mark Eglinton—come up and clap me on the back. All smiles. I’m beyond touched by this welcome. Rick appears at the window. Sans smile.
“Mmmmm. So you’re wanting a job here again . . . ,” he says grimly, as if we never had that phone conversation. Or as if, last season, I’d lobbed a petrol bomb onto the eighteenth green.
“Yes, Rick, I—I do.”
Rick pauses, weighing the matter and hiking up the drama to final-round British Open levels. Oh my God—is he going to say no?!
“Well . . . ,” he says at last, “I’ll allow it.” He shoves some paper at me. “Fill out these forms. The new waterproofs are sixty pounds. I’ll need that money now.”
Lovely seeing you again too, Rick.
There’s no time to overthink my caddie master’s warm welcome. At 10:40 A.M., I’m thrown onto the Old for my first round back. (I determine that it is possibly not a good idea to remind Rick about the caddie documentary just yet.) In my group are four American dentists . . . and three trainee caddies. I survey this scene and observe, with a small measure of delight, that I’m the veteran caddie in the group. Out on the course, the welcoming ceremony continues. Davie Coyne waves his flag at me fr
om the second green. Colin Gerard gives me a big high five as we pass in the third and sixteenth fairways. John Boyne doffs his cap overdramatically on the fourth. Susan Squire and Nick Robertson do a coordinated team dance from the other side of the sixth green. On every double green, in every double fairway, caddies squint at me from afar, then march over to welcome me back. Each hole, my happiness level soars. Each hole, my confidence level soars as well, and my green reads and club selections begin to sharpen. My caddie “chat” is returning. I lead our group in sightseeing, pointing out bunkers, course features, town history, flaunting my experience over the trainees. It’s all coming back.
“What’s the line on this one, Ollie?”
My golfer, Mike, is gazing down the thirteenth fairway from our tee box.
“Well, I’d start this on the right edge of the St. Andrews Bay Hotel. With our draw, it should funnel left nicely. But give it another minute or so—that group in front still has to clear.”
“Okay. Sounds good!”
Mike returns to chatting with his buddies. “I can’t believe some people don’t take caddies!” I hear him confide to his friends. That phrase never gets old for caddies out here. I’ll have to try to work that in for my documentary.
I turn back down our fairway, proud of how quickly I’ve regained my form. Just like riding a bicycle. As I daydream about the caddie documentary, I can feel the other trainees watching me, waiting to hear my advice before giving theirs. They’re looking up to me. Learning from me. Loving me. Since we have a little more wait time, I decide to go rewet my caddie towel. I stride over to the ball washer and casually insert my towel into the washer hole. It’s an old caddie trick, providing just enough soapy water to dampen your towel for ball wipes, and usually eliciting awe from your golfers. The trainee eyes follow me. I’m the center of their attention, and I’m loving it. I press the handle down on the washer, then go to remove my bib. It doesn’t come out. I’ve rammed in my towel too deeply. Eyes widening, I try again, less casually now. Still nothing. It’s totally stuck. Worse, with my towel clipped to my caddie bib, I am now suddenly attached to the ball washer . . . ten horrifying feet in front of where my golfers will tee off.
An American Caddie in St. Andrews: Growing Up, Girls, and Looping on the Old Course Page 14