The others laugh as another caddie adds, “Ah was with him on the twelfth tee once, and he says to his golfer, trying to be to’ally clever, ‘Okay, on this shot, ahm givin’ yoo full artistic license!’ . . . which is just another way of saying you can go left or right!” The third caddie has a story too. “I was oot with him one time, and he says on a putt, ‘Aye, this is just left edge,’ and his golfer is silent, so he points to a spot a foot right and says, ‘But over here would work too if ya want!’” The caddies roar with laughter. Behind the camera, I have to stifle my own laugh.
It’s undeniable—the caddies are growing comfortable with my filming. Having Jimmy Bowman in my corner is a big reason. But I also think that the constant sight of me down here, with my camera, must be helping too. Since Jimmy signed on, I’ve been making a regular habit of it. Filming, then caddying. Caddying, then filming. Grabbing for my camera whenever I’ve got a free moment in the shack. And slowly—slowly—it’s getting easier. Slowly it’s become a fact: Horovitz is filming this summer. And the idea that the old caddies are actually acknowledging this—it’s beyond thrilling. Suddenly I’ve got an identity down here. I have something that I’m doing, that I’m carving out for myself. And as the three caddies now switch topics to discussing the official caddie waterproofs (“We should get a deal with Zero Restriction or Galvin Green—these jackets are pish!”), and as other caddies around the shack exchange snipes about golfers, I realize that I am loving shooting this film.
“Okay, lads, keep it clean, keep it clean . . .”
Rick has walked into the room.
All laughter immediately ceases. Everyone stiffens. Everyone realizes they’re instantly in danger—like a herd of gazelle unexpectedly greeted by a mountain leopard.
“Mmmmmmm . . .” In a kind of awkward sweep, Rick has begun walking around the room—“casually” throwing away newspapers, switching off the TV, tidying up. It’s clear that our caddie master is acutely suspicious about what is being said on camera, so he’s keeping tabs on the filming. But he’s also hyperaware that he’s on camera right now himself. A bizarre situation is thus playing out, in which Rick has a smile tacked on his face and is feigning chumminess—while barely concealing a scowl.
“Interestingggg . . .” Rick has stopped at the caddie notice board and is apparently checking something out. There is literally no reason for him to be looking at this, since he wrote and put up all these notices himself. “Okaaaayyy . . . that’s good . . . ,” he says as I hesitantly pan my camera back to the three caddies. As tense as the caddies currently appear, as on edge as Rick is, I am by far the most freaked at this moment. I have no idea how to handle this situation. I frame a close-up of the three caddies, then realize that Rick has moved directly behind my shoulder. He’s off camera right now, and he’s no longer saying anything. He’s just watching. The caddies being filmed realize this too. Everyone in the room goes silent, not sure how to react. It’s a caddie Cuban Missile Crisis. Rick puts down a caddie yardage book on the table, in frame. “Mmmmm . . . hone in on the caddie yardage book,” he says. The joke’s weaker than tissue paper, but everyone feels obligated to laugh. This is becoming unbearable. Suddenly, I’m saved by a . . .
Beep beep.
My battery’s about to run out. “Gotta change batteries!” I announce loudly, entirely for Rick’s benefit. “This’ll take a while, sorry, everyone.”
“Mmmmmmm . . .” Rick seems satisfied and walks out of the room. His office door closes three seconds later, prompting the loudest sighs of relief I’ve ever heard emanating from caddie throats. I weakly put my camera down. I note the tremendous power a camera can have over people. Once again, I have a headache.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“We’ve got young Oliver here, filming Henry and myself, talking rubbish.”
Uncle Ken giggles his giggle. Then he puts down the phone. “That was Pat McClaridge, of the caravan gang.” As my uncle leads me into the kitchen, he smiles brightly. “Busy morning here, you know! I’ve got the plumber upstairs! I’ve got Henry here!”
Henry is here indeed. He’s sitting at the end of the kitchen table, cup of tea at the ready, digestive biscuit in his left hand, his long legs stretched out under the table. He looks very comfortable.
“Your lot, your president, he was speakin’ over the television last night.”
The kitchen table is packed with essential items for a St. Andrews Saturday morning. Biscuit tins. Newspapers. Chocolates. And, it seems, a never-ending replenishment of cups of tea. I once read a George Orwell essay arguing that the British Empire is held together solely by cups of tea. Orwell certainly got it right for this corner of the empire.
“And I was at the church yesterday, for the funeral, and what a lovely service it was,” Henry says. “There were eight hundred of us in the church.”
As Henry speaks, Uncle Ken (drinking tea) pores over the St. Andrews local paper—The Citizen. The two are in their “casual” clothes—sweater-vests over dress shirts and ties. Outside, a symphony of seagull calls leaks into the 4 Howard Place gen meeting.
“That was the young lad, he was only sixty-seven. And he shook hands with me the day before he died. Died out on the golf course.”
“Terrible, really,” Uncle Ken remarks.
The two dapper gents chew biscuits together in silence for a few moments, thinking of another fallen friend. Then Henry changes topics, to something less grim.
“Does this thing do sound as well?”
No, Henry. I’m making a silent movie of you eating biscuits. “Yeah. It’s got sound and everything,” I reply.
Henry shakes his head at Uncle Ken. “By golly, I’m blowed. The things these young lads know.” Henry takes a deep satisfied sip of tea as Uncle Ken nods his head and giggles. Behind the camera, I know that this is important. Preserving this tea session forever. Because in my head, I want to make these mornings with Uncle Ken and Henry last forever.
* * *
After our shoot, I head from 4 Howard Place down to the shack, with my camera. I’m passing behind the eighteenth green when I look down and see David Coyne (Coynie) and James McHugh (Scruff) on the green. They were first out today at six thirty A.M. and have raced around in three hours and twenty minutes. Both of them see me and see my camera. They smile widely, give me the thumbs-up. Then Coynie yells up to me, past his golfers and past the rest of the group. A big, roaring yell.
“Spielberg!”
The caddies grin, wave, then turn back to their putt reads as ten American tourists beside me give me very confused looks. I keep walking, but now I’ve got a whale-wide grin plastered on my face. It feels as important as getting my badge. It feels like another rite of passage. Finally, I’ve got a shack nickname.
• • •
Over the next few weeks, “Spielberg” sticks.
Whenever I’m filming by the shack. Whenever I’m caddying on the course. Whenever I’m in town buying a yum-yum. The call is always the same. “Spielberg!” Then, following the shout, an accompanying hand signal of a camera being cranked (slightly anachronistic, sure, but I’m not complaining). “Horovitz,” my former not-really-a-moniker moniker, is gone, and I now hear myself being referred to as Spielberg, completely casually, as if that were my real name. “The number’s at sixty-five right now—that’ll be Scotty, Joe, and Spielberg out next,” Alistair Taylor will say, calculating inside the shack. “You should’ve seen me and Spielberg’s golfers just now—neither of us were on the same fairway all day,” Greig Stanfield will announce. “You’ll need tah autograph a copy of the DVD for me,” Colin Gerard tells me seriously as I pass him in the shack.
There’s something bizarre, and awesome, about all this. I mean, I’m only making a thirty-minute video for my film class. Jurassic Park IV: St. Andrews this is not. But for the caddies, this is enough. In the shack, in the context of this world, this little video makes me “Spielberg.” And maybe this is a big deal. Maybe this is a start. Maybe if I can tackle this film and succeed,
then I’ll have proven that I can make a film in any environment. That I can be a filmmaker.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Spielberg!”
David Field, a younger caddie from Guardbridge, is waving to me from the middle of the first fairway. “What’s up, Dave!” I yell back as I walk up the path from Granny Clark’s Wynd to the shack. Alistair Taylor, also in the group, grins at me and does the camera-cranking hand motion. It’s a perfect morning, warm and windless, and as I get to the window—thoughts of a pleasant caddie round and postround filming in my head—I’m gloriously happy.
Rick is there to greet me.
“Mmmm . . . Oliver, step into my office,” Rick says, frowning.
My body goes cold.
“Uh, what is it, Rick?” I ask, stepping inside and trying to sound innocent—even though, wait, I am innocent . . . what the hell is going on? Rick shuts the office door, turns to face me.
“Mmmm . . . I don’t like where this is heading,” Rick says. “You’re filming the wrong caddies. You’re getting the wrong things. I’m receiving complaints.”
Complaints? What complaints Rick might be receiving, I have no idea. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he’s made this part up. But I know better than to question my caddie master by now.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Oliver. I have a new rule. On the links, you must remain five hundred feet from golfers and caddies at all times.”
“. . . Wait, what?”
The implications of this new rule have hit me.
“You can film from outside this distance,” Rick concedes, “but if I catch you any closer . . .” His voice trails off.
Five hundred feet. A number that Rick’s probably made up in .500 milliseconds.
“But, Rick! That’s . . . that’s not . . . there’s no way I can film from that—”
Rick throws open the door of his office. He rises to his feet, so that he stands twice my height. “Any closer, and there are going to be problems.”
I rise and trudge out of the office. Rick slams the door shut.
There are already problems.
THIRTY-NINE
“Seven-iron, stay down through tha ball.”
Jimmy Bowman picks up his bag, steps back to five feet. He’s done his bit. Now only his golfer can screw it up. Refocusing with my camera, I film Jimmy, from the side. I’m standing two feet away—which is, give or take, 498 feet, in violation of Rick’s 500-Foot Rule. But after a week of trying to abide by my caddie master’s policy, in which I’ve recorded nothing but footage resembling Eastern European spy video with bad binoculars, I’ve decided to take the risk. I move in slightly on Jimmy now (new distance violation: 499 feet) as the old caddie watches his client.
“One forty-two you said, right, Jimmy?” asks the guy, a soft-spoken fifty-year-old from Wisconsin.
“Aye, one forty-two flag.”
Jimmy takes a long drag on his cigarette. He looks confident, in a way you can be only when you’re 100 percent sure 7’s the right club. It’s early morning, and a thick curtain of fog hangs over the course. Everywhere I look on this fourth hole, we’re encased in white. It’s kind of dreamlike. There’s no wind, no noise. Only a sudden dull thud.
“Shit!” Jimmy’s golfer exclaims. His shot was skulled. Badly.
“Nae bother, that’ll be fine,” Jimmy announces, and picks up his bag. Then he looks over at me and adds privately, “Sort of.”
Jimmy and I have become tight.
It’s a funny bond, that of filmmaker and subject. The weeks of shooting have made us close, given us a private window into each other’s lives. We don’t say a huge amount to each other on the course—I know enough to let the veteran caddie do his job. But Jimmy likes a chat, and if we’re walking between shots and we’re behind the golfers, we’ll talk. Jimmy tells me about his daughter, about life in the town before the hotels and the tour groups. He tells me about knowing Uncle Ken. Which is cool, because he actually reminds me of my uncle anyway. Sure, Jimmy’s fifteen years younger. And he’s fifteen light-years gruffer. But like Uncle Ken, Jimmy’s a fighter. Jimmy doesn’t quit. Jimmy does what he wants. That’s why he’s still chugging along at seventy, in a profession so physically demanding that you’ve done well if you’re still going at forty. A profession that doesn’t make your body strong, as people think, but in fact wears your body down, makes you look fifty-five when you’re forty, and eighty-five when you’re seventy.
“You doing a round Sunday?” Jimmy asks me as we walk to the fifth green.
“Yeah, eleven forty-four on the Jube.”
Jimmy nods. “Me too, I’m in that group.”
“Cool.”
We share a few moments of silence, both kind of happy that we know someone in tomorrow’s group. I’ve stopped filming, and for the moment we’re just walking together as two caddies. It strikes me that all those caddie rounds I did in Bass Rocks for member-guests and club championships at age twelve—caddying for Mike Butter with his pink shorts and two gloves, or Richie Burke with his directive to stand in the sixteenth fairway while he hit 3-irons at me to warm up—that all this was somehow being stored away for the future, when it would let me get to know guys like Jimmy.
“How’s the rest of the film turning out?” Jimmy asks.
“Really well, Jimmy. I think I’ve got almost everything I need now.”
Jimmy nods. “Oh well, that’s good. It’s been fun, this, you know.”
“Yeah. For me too, Jimmy,” I say. And it has been. Really fun. I’m almost finished with shooting now. I kind of wish it were just starting again.
* * *
Up on the sixth green, Jimmy studies his golfer’s putt as if it’s to win the British Open.
“Left-edge on it, John,” he says at last, decisively.
“Get my first one today?” John asks with a warm smile. He knows that he won the caddie lottery with Jimmy this morning.
“Yeah, give it a chance,” the old caddie replies. There’s a short wait for John’s friend to putt out, so Jimmy continues an earlier story.
“Aye, 2000 Open was nice, because it was right before my fortieth wedding anniversary.”
“Oh great! So you’ve already had your forty-fifth . . .”
“Well, no—aye, yes,” Jimmy says, calculating, then remembering. “That’s right. Twenty-second of July. Forty-sixth wedding anniversary today.”
Behind the camera, I’m shocked. I didn’t know it was Jimmy’s anniversary today either. John grins and shakes Jimmy’s hand.
“Congratulations. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Oh well, neither do I sometimes.” Jimmy smiles. There’s a nice beat, before John looks at Jimmy and adds a thought.
“I lost my wife two years ago, and I miss her terribly.”
Now it’s Jimmy who’s shocked. “What, an illness or something, John?”
John nods. “Breast cancer.”
“Oh, that’s a bad disease,” Jimmy says, unsure of what to say.
“She was just getting into golf. She’d loved it,” John says sadly.
“Bad disease, that,” Jimmy repeats. And then the two men speak simultaneously for the next five seconds, not knowing how else to act:
“If you catch it early enough, some of the time . . .”
“Yeah, we caught it early . . . but we just didn’t get any breaks with it.”
“It’s a bad disease that, bad disease . . .”
In front of the camera, golfer and caddie both fall silent, together in the fog. Behind the camera, all I can do is keep filming. As I shoot, I think about why John suddenly decided to share this information with us. I wonder if he wanted to have the memory of his wife preserved on video. Or maybe it’s more simple. Maybe being out here in a strange country, in a strange wilderness of gorse and fog, makes a person vulnerable, unguarded. Maybe with Jimmy, John felt motivated to share what he’s been dealing with the last two years. I think about John Updike’s short story “Farrell’s Caddie,” and about the
weird and wonderful relationship between a golfer and the caddie. I watch as Jimmy and his golfer continue to speak privately. I don’t disturb them. I’m happy to have been here with them. And I hope that being out here on the Old with Jimmy, for the visiting American, was in some way, cathartic.
* * *
The round is finished. And for the last time on the Old Course, I switch off my camera. With any luck, I should be able to get straight out this afternoon, for my own caddie round. I head back toward the shack and approach the window with my camera equipment.
Rick is there.
“I want to talk to you, Ollie.”
Shit.
“Meet me behind the shack.”
Oh SHIT.
Meekly, I head toward the side of the shack. What’s going on? Has Rick caught me filming up close? Has someone tattled on me? Am I about to be forced to destroy the tapes? I arrive at the North Sea side of the shack, beside the pull carts, where Rick already stands. My caddie master begins speaking.
“Oliver, I’m not happy. I’m not happy at all.”
I have to interject. “Rick, first of all—I need to apologize if I’ve upset you. This wasn’t my intention. I just needed to film on the course up close for a few rounds. I’m really sorry.” I put out my hand for a handshake, but Rick doesn’t take my hand.
“No, mate, you always do a handshake, but you keep having goes at the caddie shack!”
My caddie master is furious. He points at me.
“I want to tell you something, Oliver. You’re going above and beyond this. But this is me, this is what I do. I started from shite in there, and I’ve made this what it is. You have your life, I have my life. This is my life—it’s not heaven, but I’m very proud of it.”
He looks at me. “Just remember that.”
It is a moment of honesty. A moment of truth. And it catches me completely off guard. I’m still not sure what exactly triggered this talk—if Rick actually heard that I violated his rule or not. But it doesn’t matter. In this instant, I suddenly understand how much of Rick’s life is tied up in the shack. I understand why he agonizes about how it’s portrayed. For the first time in my caddie life, I don’t see Rick as the fearsome caddie master, a source of danger. I look at him now, in his blue Links Trust vest, and see a man, proud of his world, and proud of his work, trying to avoid the pot bunkers like everyone else. Rick, for a camera click, has removed his armor and revealed himself. He hasn’t fired me. He’s letting me back. But he’s shown me why he protects his world so tightly, and why this in itself deserves respect. It’s not often in a twenty-year-old’s life that an adult tells it to you straight.
An American Caddie in St. Andrews: Growing Up, Girls, and Looping on the Old Course Page 18