![]() ![]() I turned my head and realized his intention - my bag was at such an angle that all the clubs were about to spill out. He emphatically motioned again and tapped one of the bags he was carrying. I thought it was an enthusiastic acknowledgement ( Hey, you’ve got this!) so I pointed back. On the third hole, Tim pointed at me from across the fairway. “Puttin’ on the war paint,” he’d say as he applied it to his face. As a “super looper,” he’d carry two bags I’d only get one since I was a rookie, also known as a “rabbit.” Tim was the only caddy I saw use sunscreen. There were three golfers and I was paired with a veteran caddy, Tim. I once saw a caddy rip a newspaper to shreds just so nobody else could read it.Īfter days of sitting, the caddy master - has there ever been a more appropriate title for a boss? - felt I’d paid my dues and sent me out for my first loop. ![]() Some of the nicest guys I’ve ever met were caddies others were crude, standoffish or nasty. We divided into groups for conversation: The eighteen-to-twenty-five year-olds talked about girls and partying the thirty-to-forty crowd preferred sports and television shows the senior group complained about their health problems. The caddies spanned all ages, races and backgrounds, though there were no women. The waiting list for the dozen or so mini-lockers was long if half the caddies had suddenly died I might have gotten one. Maybe it’s because we’d have nowhere to put them. Given the downtime, it was surprising how few books I saw around the caddy shack. There were newspapers caddies had brought in from the city always the Post or Daily News, rarely the Times or Journal. Waiting for my name to be called one morning, I tried to count the dimples on a golf ball, a nearly impossible task without a marker. The caddy shack did not have a TV or board games or ping pong tables, and smartphones weren’t mainstream until my last year or so. I just showed up one day and sat on the bench. There was no interview and I didn’t have to submit a résumé or even provide ID. Caddying seemed better than the camp counselor jobs many of my friends had. My brother had caddied there and said it was good money. I caddied at a country club in Westchester County, New York, during my high school and college summers, starting in 2000. “Nope, no, just took a weird hop off a tree root.” “Did that get you?” the golfer asked when he arrived at the green. Instead of suffering the pain you’d expect from taking a golf ball to the groin, I was able to act like nothing had happened. ![]() Fortunately - and I can’t stress that word enough - I had taken a wide stance and had my hands in my pockets, creating a trampoline effect in the crotch of my khaki shorts. I craned my neck from left to right, pretending to follow the ball as it rose and fell and…smacked me in the nuts. Sometimes we don’t see that shot and have to improvise. On several holes, such as this one, we were expected to leave the golfers on the green and go ahead to get a better view of the next tee shot. One of the players popped his ball up so high I lost sight of it in the hazy sky, forcing me to pretend to follow its path towards the green. My testicles were unharmed by the force of the descending golf ball. In my final summer as a country club caddy, I stood next to an elevated green while the golfers teed off 150 yards away and forty feet below. ![]()
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