Govt Cheese a memoir by Steven Pressfield

Author:Steven Pressfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarsaparilla Media
Published: 2022-10-24T15:07:20+00:00

40. WHIPPOORWILL

When I was a kid, I worked as a caddie at a place called the Whippoorwill Club in Armonk, New York. Sounds dumb, I know, but this course was and is one of the primo designs in a three-cornered area—Westchester, Long Island, Connecticut—that has more golf courses per capita, and more quality challenges—Winged Foot (East and West), Shinnecock Hills, Bethpage Black, the National Golf Links, Maidstone, Westchester C.C., Inwood, Apawamis, Quaker Ridge, Piping Rock, Stanwich, Yale, Tamarack—than any comparable region in the country.

I started when I was eleven. We made four bucks a bag with a dollar tip to make five. Two bags equaled ten dollars. Two loops made twenty.

Why do kids caddie? For some it was money. Others were poor kids who wanted to go to college. Like in the movie Caddyshack, they’d suck up to certain club members—judges, lawyers, community leaders—angling for a letter or phone call that would one day open a door. Not me. For me, it was all about the game. About learning to play.

When I was twelve, I handed Frank the caddiemaster a list of my approved players. The list was hand-written, in pencil, on the back of a scorecard. Nobody does something like that. To my amazement, Frank accepted this. The list was the only golfers I wanted to caddie for. They were the best players at the club but, more importantly for me, they were the players with the most technically perfect swings.

I wanted to study them. I promised Frank I would give them my all. I idolized them. I revered them. Even when I was so undersized my nickname in the yard was “Shorty” (later “Peanuts”), Frank would send me out overloaded with the monster bags of Jack Hesler—former Kentucky State amateur champ and Junior Davis Cup tennis player—and Brant Overstander—New York State high hurdles champion and plus-three handicapper, not to mention Hugh Skelly, Stu Benedict, and Sandy Piper.

If you were a golf-mad kid and your family belonged to a country club, you got to grow up taking lessons from the pro. For us caddies, the learning track was old school—find somebody great and study the hell out of them. On a typical round caddying for Hesler or Overstander, I would deliberately station myself behind, in front of, or to their right or left, so I could watch and imbibe specific aspects of their technique—footwork, turn, action through the ball. I studied their grips. I inhaled their attitudes. I missed nothing. How they handled adversity, how they seized opportunities, what phrases they muttered to themselves when they thought no one was listening.

The bond was by no means one-way. These athletes—and that’s what they were—reckoned the look in my eyes and the eyes of my brother young caddies. They would turn to us in moments of competition when the idea of seeking counsel from a thirteen-year-old was patently ridiculous, and they’d pay us the compliment of taking us seriously. We would have thrown ourselves into fire for them. When the big

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