I’ve got the four men’s names in my head, and which golf ball each is using, while I follow their tee shots across the sky and mark their landings in my mind. The golfers don’t speak any English, and Johnny and I know about ten words of Spanish between us, but somehow Johnny conveys that two of the drives are in deep trouble, we might not find them, so it would be best to play a provisional. They do. Now I have six golf balls in my mind.
Up the fairway we go. Johnny will take the two who have sprayed their drives to the right, and I’ll take the two who have hit hooks. “Keep them moving,” Johnny tells me. “We’ve got foursomes right behind us.”
This is a problem. I find five golf balls in the crap, but none of them are the balls these fellows have hit. Everywhere I turn I keep stepping on golf balls in the thick fescue. No luck. Both men arehappy dropping balls in the fairway and playing on, but I feel like a failure. If I am out with Jack in a tournament, that is a penalty for a lost ball.
On we went. Things are a bit more complicated with the Spaniards because they need their distances in meters instead of yards. You do the simple math in your head, deducting 10 percent. So a 150-yard shot turns into a 135-meter shot. On the 4th green Johnny tells me it’s my turn to tend the flag. This is the caddies’ main performance. Center stage. Tending the flag if the golfer is so far away with his putt that he needs it in the hole to find the hole. Pulling it out and holding it so that the flag doesn’t blow in the wind. Standing so that your shadow doesn’t fall in anyone’s line. A shadow without a shadow. You sort of dance around the green, and if you are doing your job correctly, no one notices you. That’s the key, to blend in and disappear. I read both putts perfectly and watched both balls drop into the center of the hole. “Well done,” Johnny said to me. I thanked him and then, in my excitement, proceeded to march halfway to the next tee still holding the flag.
By the time we stood on the 11th tee box, the empty blue sky had been replaced by clouds so thick and black that it felt as if night were descending. Our golfers were playing like piss, losing two or three balls on every hole (balls we were no longer even trying to find) but laughing and drinking whiskey and apparently having the time of their lives. I wanted to do something to help my two fellows, and I was trying my best, but as soon as I had one of them straightened out and back on the fairway, the other was in trouble again in the rough or a bunker or a river. It was as if I were babysitting two rambunctious toddlers in a fine house filled with priceless antiques. Every time I turned my back, there was another catastrophe. One moment they were knocking over the Ming vase in the foyer. The next they were banging the keys on the Steinway. Suddenly a hailstorm was upon us, and we all went trotting after Johnny, who led the way to a ditch beneath a tree where we pulled our jackets over our heads andcurled up in the fetal position. The hail was large enough to feel as if someone were throwing rocks at us. All we could do was curse and then laugh. One of the Spaniards passed around his flask. When I declined, Johnny told me he had noticed that I never went to the pub after work with the boys. I had hoped that my absence was going unnoticed. When we all sat outside the caddie shed, there was always a lot of banter about what had happened or failed to happen the night before in the pub. It was common for caddies doing two loops a day to spend all the money earned from one loop in the pub that night. The other morning I’d heard one senior caddie say, “I had a hundred quid with me when I went to the pub. Then I woke up this morning with only eight quid left.” There was no accounting for this; at £1.50 for a pint, he would have had to drink sixty-six pints. I had already taken my pledge to send all my earnings home and to never spend a dime
Up the fairway we go. Johnny will take the two who have sprayed their drives to the right, and I’ll take the two who have hit hooks. “Keep them moving,” Johnny tells me. “We’ve got foursomes right behind us.”
This is a problem. I find five golf balls in the crap, but none of them are the balls these fellows have hit. Everywhere I turn I keep stepping on golf balls in the thick fescue. No luck. Both men arehappy dropping balls in the fairway and playing on, but I feel like a failure. If I am out with Jack in a tournament, that is a penalty for a lost ball.
On we went. Things are a bit more complicated with the Spaniards because they need their distances in meters instead of yards. You do the simple math in your head, deducting 10 percent. So a 150-yard shot turns into a 135-meter shot. On the 4th green Johnny tells me it’s my turn to tend the flag. This is the caddies’ main performance. Center stage. Tending the flag if the golfer is so far away with his putt that he needs it in the hole to find the hole. Pulling it out and holding it so that the flag doesn’t blow in the wind. Standing so that your shadow doesn’t fall in anyone’s line. A shadow without a shadow. You sort of dance around the green, and if you are doing your job correctly, no one notices you. That’s the key, to blend in and disappear. I read both putts perfectly and watched both balls drop into the center of the hole. “Well done,” Johnny said to me. I thanked him and then, in my excitement, proceeded to march halfway to the next tee still holding the flag.
By the time we stood on the 11th tee box, the empty blue sky had been replaced by clouds so thick and black that it felt as if night were descending. Our golfers were playing like piss, losing two or three balls on every hole (balls we were no longer even trying to find) but laughing and drinking whiskey and apparently having the time of their lives. I wanted to do something to help my two fellows, and I was trying my best, but as soon as I had one of them straightened out and back on the fairway, the other was in trouble again in the rough or a bunker or a river. It was as if I were babysitting two rambunctious toddlers in a fine house filled with priceless antiques. Every time I turned my back, there was another catastrophe. One moment they were knocking over the Ming vase in the foyer. The next they were banging the keys on the Steinway. Suddenly a hailstorm was upon us, and we all went trotting after Johnny, who led the way to a ditch beneath a tree where we pulled our jackets over our heads andcurled up in the fetal position. The hail was large enough to feel as if someone were throwing rocks at us. All we could do was curse and then laugh. One of the Spaniards passed around his flask. When I declined, Johnny told me he had noticed that I never went to the pub after work with the boys. I had hoped that my absence was going unnoticed. When we all sat outside the caddie shed, there was always a lot of banter about what had happened or failed to happen the night before in the pub. It was common for caddies doing two loops a day to spend all the money earned from one loop in the pub that night. The other morning I’d heard one senior caddie say, “I had a hundred quid with me when I went to the pub. Then I woke up this morning with only eight quid left.” There was no accounting for this; at £1.50 for a pint, he would have had to drink sixty-six pints. I had already taken my pledge to send all my earnings home and to never spend a dime
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