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

Author:Oliver Horovitz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

• • •

“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 from the second green. Colin Gerard gives me a big high five as we pass in the third and sixteenth fairways.

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