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

by Oliver Horovitz

  I head inside the library. Stanley Milgram, and an all-nighter, are waiting for me.

  • • •

  March 25, 2005, Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m in my dorm room. New England’s “wintah,” with thirty-six inches of snow and temperatures to freeze a grown man’s tears, refuses to release its Heimlich hold on the city. I’m at my PowerBook, trying to write a two-thousand-word American public policy paper, due the next morning (word count thus far: seven).

  I sigh loudly. I’m feeling homesick. Not for New York City. Not for Gloucester, Massachusetts. I’m homesick for St. Andrews and the Old Course—posters of which are both tacked to my wall. I look out my window. More snow is falling, promising a white Easter.

  Suddenly there’s an AOL ding. It’s an e-mail from my friend Alistair Woodman, who is captain of the University of St. Andrews Men’s Golf Club. He tells me the club will be marshaling at the British Open the week of July 11, covering the grandstand directly behind the infamous seventeenth, the Road Hole. Ali wants to know if I’m up for coming back over and marshaling. I’ve been considering a return to St. Andrews to caddie anyway, and I’ve got just enough caddie savings to make the trip. This seals the deal. I e-mail Ali back: “Count me in.”

  I log onto Travelocity, book a cheap airline ticket. I check the snow outside my window. It’s kind of pretty.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Do you wanna keep the Animal House poster?”

  Dritan is perched precariously on the top ledge of his desk, attempting to remove posters and Blu Tack from our common-room wall. He’s sweating a little from the exertion. Stacks of books and boxes line the floors, as well as a good portion of his twenty-three sweaters.

  “No, she’s all yours.”

  I throw on some shoes, grab my folder and ID card. I shoot past my suitcases, out the door. I’m running late.

  Outside Weld Hall, Harvard Yard is a beehive of activity. Futons are being carried clumsily by packs of freshman roommates. Books are being carted by parents toward awaiting minivans. Students everywhere are hugging, crying, saying good-byes. It’s our final day of school, our final day in Harvard Yard freshman dorms, our first hours of summer. I’m already thinking about the Old Course.

  Sprinting faster than Phil Mickelson toward a buffet, I make it to the Expository Writing building and hand in my final essay of freshman year (“The Later Works of Ernest Hemingway”—composed at three A.M. and unlikely to win a Pulitzer). Ten minutes later, I’m shouting good-byes to my roommates and friends and gunning it to Logan Airport. I’ve got a 2:40 P.M. Continental flight to Newark: the first leg of my St. Andrews journey. Everything’s ready; Rick’s given me the okay over the phone and I’m set to re-don my caddie bib in a few short days. All I have to do now is make it across the pond.

  It might not be so easy. Instead of booking on a direct Boston-Edinburgh flight, I’ve selected a more circuitous route to save money. Many more legs, many more layovers. It looked painless on Travelocity, but I’m already exhausted from all-nighters analyzing A Farewell to Arms, and my journey now threatens a great deal of pain. After arriving in Newark (and a six-hour layover), I imagine myself sleeping through the next leg—from Newark to London Gatwick. When I board this flight (behind a man with a neck pillow already inflated around his head), I find my seat nestled between two very large, very loud ladies. A toddler with authority issues starts kicking my seat from behind and giggling. His sister yells, “Mom! Craigie’s misbehavin’ again!” We’re held on the tarmac for two hours. Craigie keeps misbehaving. And I sleep not one second on this flight.

  In Gatwick Airport, I’m treated to another six-hour layover and begin to deeply regret my thriftiness. Gatwick is heaving with sunburned tourists leaving England (where they sunburned, I have no idea), and my terminal is a mosh pit. My flight up to Edinburgh is delayed, and upon landing, I have to maneuver myself dazedly through Edinburgh airport to the Edinburgh City Center bus. Then onto the St. Andrews bus—which, I discover, won’t be leaving for another ninety minutes. I now haven’t slept in thirty hours.

  The icing on the haggis, however, comes when I’m finally on the Stagecoach X59 Edinburgh–St. Andrews bus, speeding down the highway at fifty miles an hour. My golf clubs and suitcase are in the lower hold, and I’ve (finally) passed out in my seat. For some reason, I am dreaming about horses. Mid-dream, I’m stirred by a small bump. Probably nothing more than a pothole. I shut my eyes again, wipe drool from my cheek. An elderly lady who boarded the bus with me in Edinburgh taps me on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I think your golf clubs and suitcase have just fallen oot of the bus.”

  This wakes me up. I snap to attention, spin around, and, sure enough, spot my golf clubs and suitcase on the road, receding away from my view at fifty miles an hour. The baggage compartment door hangs fully open.

  “Stop the bus! My stuff fell out!”

  The bus driver mutters a sharp, shocked obscenity and screeches the bus to a halt. I look back and spy a gigantic semitrailer hurtling toward my clubs. My body goes numb. Semitrailer man slams on his brakes as well (the sight of a golf travel bag is instantly recognizable to any Scotsman) and the huge semitrailer comes to a groaning halt, inches short of my bag and suitcase. I let out a soft whimper. Then I tear out of the bus and scoop up my clubs from the road like a mother duck rescuing her ducklings from a hyena. I reboard the bus and take my seat among twenty glaring Scots. By the time the steeple of St. Andrews rises into view, thirty minutes later, I’ve fallen back into a troubled sleep, now clutching my golf clubs tenderly in both arms. It’s been a long trip for all of us.

  • • •

  “Wakey wakey! Up up up!”

  I open my eyes, which are seemingly glued shut with cement. I gradually become aware that I’m in St. Andrews and in the top-floor guest room of Uncle Ken’s house. I toss, pull the covers back over my head, and try to force my way back to dreamland.

  “Yoo-hoo! Up up up!”

  No use. I sit up, yell back downstairs groggily.

  “Yep! Yes. I’m up. I’m up!”

  I hear a high-pitched giggle and then footsteps down in the lower reaches of the house. Uncle Ken’s alarm clock duties are done.

  I’m spending my first week back in St. Andrews at 4 Howard Place. The caddie flat that I’m to move into—a three-story house at 123 North Street (next door to Old Tom Morris’s former home!)—won’t be ready until June 3. So this week, I too have been spreading Benecol on my toast (“proven to lower cholesterol”) and abiding by Uncle Ken’s eight P.M. bedtime—at which point, the house is conveniently also locked. I’m not given a key.

  I stumble along the top landing, lost in replays of the past. It’s easy to remember myself here as a ten-year-old, waiting impatiently for Dad and my first round of golf on the Jubilee Course, or at age twelve, breathlessly recounting to Mom each of my first ninety-nine strokes on the Old Course. Uncle Ken’s house is like a time capsule, a museum of the past. The rooms smell of Imperial Leather soap and Radox body wash. Bonnie’s old chew toys and water bowl still sit unused in the hallway. The upstairs storage area—packed with my University of St. Andrews textbooks and spare golf balls—hasn’t been touched since I left here, nine months earlier. On the second landing, my blue bicycle leans against the wall, its gears loyally oiled by Uncle Ken in preparation for my arrival. I can’t help smiling as I pass by it. It’s nice to know that there’s a place where you matter.

  “Hm hmm hm hmmmmmm . . .”

  I follow the contented humming sound downstairs and find my now-eighty-four-year-old uncle in his kitchen. He’s wearing a blue-and-white-striped bathrobe over an off-white wife-beater. There’s a small yellow sweat towel draped around his neck, as if he’s heading to the gym, or to a backup-singing gig for Wu-Tang Clan. I suspect that Uncle Ken waked up at least an hour before me, to prepare for my “wakeup call.”

  “I’m making scrambled eggs, then I’ll have my wash-up,” Uncle Ken announces enthusiastically, motioning for
me to sit down at the table. “It’s all go-go-go around here, you know!” he adds with a giggle. He’s clearly very pleased to be lodging his caddie nephew. I take my seat. “Did you sleep well?” Uncle Ken asks.

  “Very well,” I reply. This is completely untrue. There are five spring-wound clocks in Uncle Ken’s house, each displaying a slightly different time, each ringing every hour and half hour. This sequencing, I’d forgotten, allows a roughly seven-minute window between dongs in which to fall asleep. And I missed a lot of those windows last night. I sit down groggily as Uncle Ken scrambles eggs. On the wall to our right, I spot four calendars (all displaying flowers), marked off for today, Monday, May 30. One of them has the day circled heavily, along with the inscription “Oliver to begin caddying!” This was another reason I didn’t sleep well last night.

  I’m a little nervous about starting back at the shack. And by “a little nervous,” I mean absolutely terrified. I haven’t caddied in St. Andrews since last summer and, with my typical relaxed and easygoing disposition, am now convinced that I have forgotten every possible caddie skill. The run-out to Cheape’s Bunker on hole 2. The delicate strategy needed for skirting Hell Bunker on 14. How to read putts. How to carry a golf bag. Suddenly the course that’s barely a tee shot from Uncle Ken’s kitchen, the course that I knew so well last year, seems intimidating. Scary. If I’d stayed in St. Andrews, I wouldn’t have forgotten everything. A sinking feeling begins furrowing deep in the pit of my stomach. Caddie doomsday. The golfers that I’ll be guiding today will have paid over $200 for their chance on the Old. Each stroke, each putt, will have unthinkable significance. Their game—their dreams—will be in my hands . . .

  And I was in Boston yesterday.

  What am I going to say if my golfer asks me, “What’s the weather been like here the last few weeks?” That I’m not sure? That it was pretty nice near Logan Airport yesterday? I decide that if the question arises, I’ll just say, “Rainy.”

  As I say good-bye to Uncle Ken and start pedaling down toward the course, my inner paranoia builds. By the time I reach the shack, I am a complete mess. Rick Mackenzie is there to meet me. I timidly approach the window. Although I’m returning as an official caddie, I can’t help feeling like a lowly trainee again. I can almost see negative caddie-assessment cards raining down from the sky. Rick squints as I approach and gives me a look as if an alien has just appeared from under Swilcan Bridge. My panic grows. Should I have called last week to tell him I was definitely coming back? Rick looks me up and down.

  “Ah, the American’s back,” he says.

  I’m given a job for 10:20 on the Old. This first round will be the toughest. Once I have one round under my belt, I’ll be able to at least fake my caddying for the rest of the week, until I’m fully back in the swing. But on this first round, I’m naked, vulnerable, like a penguin. Or a hamster. Or some other animal that sounds vulnerable.

  But what I don’t want on this first round back, above all else, is a good golfer. Simply put, a laser-accurate golfer on your first round back exposes all caddie chinks. Rusty clubbing, bad yardages, poor reads, incorrect pitch-shot-landing advice—all will be exposed by a good golfer. No, for the love of God, I do not want a good golfer today. At 10:12, I head to the first tee, nearly catatonic with fear. I can’t have a scratch golfer. I can’t have a scratch golfer. Oh God, please don’t give me a scratch golfer. I meet my guy on the first tee—a tall hulking man from Canada who looks good. It’s the moment of truth. I ask him what his handicap is.

  “Nineteen . . . but I’m not shooting to it.”

  I want to hug him.

  * * *

  Hours have passed, and we’re out on the course. Ted, a Canadian ex–football player, swings with all the grace and control of an elephant on methamphetamines. He botches his shots so badly that my (numerous) misclubs and iffy reads are hidden under a delicious veil of ineptitude. Ted’s golfing buddies are all also ex–pro football and lacrosse players from Toronto. They spend the round complaining about their aching bodies and frequently popping extra-strength Advil gel tablets.

  There’s something else happening, though, as well.

  Down every double fairway and on every double green, I pass other caddies. They squint at me from afar, as if not trusting their eyes. And then they wave at me. Shouting welcomes. Every fairway. Every green. Colin Gerard. Sandy Bayne. Scott Bechelli. His brother Bill. Dougie Saunderson. Gordon Smith. Kevin O’Donnell. Steve Jones. Graham Cowan. Willie Stewart. Big smiles. Backs temporarily turned to their golfers for the greeting. Alec Howie simply abandons his golfer and walks across the enormous fifth/thirteenth green (today, a fifty-seven-yard walk between pins) to shake my hand. I couldn’t dream up a better welcoming ceremony.

  Finally, on 15, I see my ex–shadow caddie, Kenny. Kenny’s got a small Korean lady. He sees me, grins, does a small fist pump from the opposite side of the green. I return the pump and turn back to give my own golfer a brilliant read (inside left). He drains his putt. My freshly ironed caddie bib flaps in the wind. There’s a big smile on my face. It’s good to be home.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Greaves, Patrick, Alex Findlay, and I bang a right onto the Scores, passing a group of American golfers sitting outside the Chariots Bar, and continue on toward the pub Ma Bells.

  “Totally serious. Some of them should be out tonight, I’ll introduce you,” Alex replies.

  I’ve just been told something wonderful. No, way beyond wonderful. Something magical. Apparently, a new business has just begun in St. Andrews—founded by two University of St. Andrews fourth-year students named Kenda and Lauren—and everyone is talking about it. It’s called Model Caddies. The idea is this: Twenty-five gorgeous university girls, mostly English, mostly with cute English accents, all with modeling experience, will be caddying on Scottish golf courses this summer. They’re charging fifty-five pounds plus tip (significantly more than the thirty-five pounds our curmudgeonly Old Course lot charges) and can be individually selected, via a brochure with head shots of each girl. To advertise the program and sign up American golfers, the girls have apparently been heading to pubs in St. Andrews every night.

  A seagull screeches above our heads. Alex starts texting someone.

  “Tasmin should be there already.”

  I just met Alex yesterday. Alex is a friend of Greaves’s. He’s a tall and polite blond-haired English kid whose family belongs to super-posh Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich and who’s going into his second year at the University of St. Andrews. Alex just started his first season of Old Course caddying, and I was out with him yesterday. In fact, I saved his ass yesterday, informing him midround that sprinkler-head yardages are to the front of greens, not the middle.

  Alex finishes sending his text message and starts chatting with Greaves about a Model Caddie. Alex knows a lot about the Model Caddies program, and with good reason. He’s dating one of the Model Caddies. One of the most beautiful.

  * * *

  “Jesus, it’s heaving.”

  We head down the stairs and into Ma Bells. Patrick’s right, it’s totally packed. People are everywhere—students, caddies, golfers, locals. A DJ blasts music from the opposite end. The bar is three rows deep; it’s a great crowd for a Wednesday. As we squeeze toward the bar, I pepper Alex with more questions.

  “Do they know how to caddie?”

  “Except for two of them, no clue. Most haven’t even been on a golf course before.”

  “Really!”

  My attention has never been less divided.

  “Yeah, they actually got thrown off Kingsbarns the other day. Some Americans paid two girls, like, a hundred and eighty pounds to caddie for them. The guys brought along beer and kept trying to kiss them.” Alex waves to a friend across the bar. “One guy asked his girl to come with him to Italy for a month. He said he’d phone his wife to ask. Sounded pretty funny.”

  “But how’d th
ey get kicked off?”

  “Oh right, anyway, one of the girls got carried away and started doing cartwheels on the seventh green.”

  “Uh-huh. And?”

  “The owner of Kingsbarns was in the four-ball behind them.”

  “Ah.”

  Alex and I emerge at the front of the bar, order pints of Belhaven Best. I can barely focus on counting out the money. At this moment of my arrival in town, there are twenty-five beautiful girls who are trying to caddie and haven’t had any training. This is quickly sounding like a caddie dream.

  Alex and I grab our drinks, and Alex spots his girlfriend, Tasmin. He ushers me over to a group of leggy blondes, introducing me to one in particular. “Ollie, this is Julia.” Julia is voluptuous, with an amply curved body that screams to me from under a tightly clinging golf shirt.

  “Julia, this is my friend Ollie. He caddies on the Old Course.” I remember meeting Julia once last year, at a friend’s flat. She seemed remarkably disinterested during our last meeting. Now she lights up.

  “Wow! That’s so cool!”

  Never in my life have I been told by a girl that caddying was cool.

  Amid the crush of music and voices, Julia and I talk for a while. I learn that Julia’s one of the Model Caddie partners.

  “It’s pretty tough right now actually,” Julia confesses. “We just need to get these girls trained. They’re all eager to learn, but we need to teach them before they can start caddying.” Julia looks distressed.

  I pause for a second. And then I say what any self-respecting nineteen-year-old caddie should say.