CADDIE'S ROLE:A WEEK BEFORE the 3 Irish Open starts at Baltray's Co Louth links I find myself wondering if I have forgotten the art of the profession that I stumbled into as an inquisitive wanderer and have since been condemned to a lifetime sentence due to modest success and lack of any viable alternatives.
My current employer has been sidelined due to a wrist injury which he incurred in February earlier this year and so I have enjoyed an unprecedented early season sojourn from travel. Not only have I avoided the humdrum ritual of weekly caddying at a professional event I have not spent so much time in planes, trains and automobiles either. I think for those not used to a constant life on the go it is the unsettling nature of spending no more than seven days in the one location that takes most getting used to.
The good old days of the last recession was an era when I had little thought of investment in shelter beyond a two-man tent and the idea of purchasing an onward ticket to the next event seemed like hasty forward planning. Some decades after my first adventure across the well trimmed fairways of Europe I find myself reminiscing about my early experiences with the Irish Open when it was one of the highlights of the annual sporting calendar, on the north side of Dublin anyway.
I had a wanderlust from my youth, probably born from the fact that our family holidays had normally involved a car trip within the 32 counties. The one time my parents ventured for a family holiday as far as London I ended up on my own at the age of eight on the wrong side of the Central Line tube doors as the train took off with my parents and sister inside and me waving goodbye to them from the platform. It was my first sense of independent adventure and may be attributed to my accidental peripatetic lifestyle.
The Irish Open qualifier came to my club in Dollymount in the early 80s and I remember observing well-tanned golfers with elegant, rhythmical swings I had previously only associated with ballet as they cut their dashing swathe across my home course. I thought that it looked like “the life” and the next week they would be doing the same in France, the week after in the Netherlands and so on along an exotic trail through Europe playing golf, earning money and living, what appeared on the surface, the dream.
The Irish Open had set up camp back in the late 70s at the famed Portmarnock links. With its standing as a top-quality course, its proximity to the city and enough extra space to host a major international event it was the obvious choice for the then sponsors, Carrolls. It was a time when golf fans were starved of golf viewing and live events attracted huge crowds. The tented village was strategically positioned to catch you on the way in and trap you on the way out if you had a thirst on you. There was the buzz of something really special to savour about north Dublin when Europe’s finest and some chosen American stars came to town to test their seaside golf skills and take on the unique links challenge.
The art of caddying back in those days was as much about getting around Europe on a shoestring as helping your player make decisions on the golf course. Being a savvy traveller was imperative to survival. I remember one of my colleagues recalling there was a new sewage system being installed on the road leading to Portmarnock on his inaugural visit. He instantly recognised the huge concrete tubes as a strategically situated resting place for the week. As long as the wind didn’t blow straight down his lodgings for the week it would be a successful one.
It was indeed a very different era on tour three decades ago from everyone’s perspective, but especially for the bagman. For many caddies their main objective was to present themselves on the first tee not looking like they had crawled out of a bush (which of course some of them had). The chances were the tent that had been put up to shelter the loopers in daylight while waiting for their players had probably housed many of them at night time when the bars had closed. Ablutions, if any, took place around a cold outside tap.
Back then knowing where the next tee was located was probably a sign of professionalism. Today you need to know which direction the tee faces and what elevation it is at. If a caddie provided yardage to his player 30 years ago it was an added bonus, now if you don’t have a laser hanging off your belt as a bagman you would be considered unprofessional.
Today as caddies we have the choice of two yardage books at our disposal to guide us around each course we go to. We have lap-tops, satellite navigation, tour travel agents and a caddies association which helps all of us arrive at our destination in a more civilised manner than we might have done some three decades ago. Instead of worrying about an east wind whistling down your pre-installed sewage pipe lodgings there could be remonstrations if the hotel did not have hot and cold running satellite television.
It is very much a different era of living on the golf tour. Watching Europe’s and Ireland’s finest battling around Co Louth next week will offer a rare chance to see an exhibition of this unique form of links golf. It is also an opportunity to see how the quality of the life of bagmen has changed for the better.
