I took the train up from Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth, along the edge of the North Sea to Leuchars, the nearest station to St. Andrews. When I stepped off the train onto the platform, a Royal Air Force jet taking off from the neighboring base blasted over the station, rattling the windows and blowing blue rings from its afterburners.
The bus into town trundled past rolling hills and farm fields, through the old mill town of Guardbridge and into the cobblestone streets of St. Andrews—the Auld Grey Town, with its towering stone arches, slate-roofed cottages, and crumbling castle ruins. I would soon be living in one of those cottages myself, but that first night I stayed in a B&B down on the Scores—the road that traces the rocky cliffs along the North Sea and dead-ends behind the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse. It was one block from my door to the Old Course.
Only two times in my life have I felt such butterflies seeing a course for the first time—at Pebble and at Augusta. But St. Andrews is very different. It is a public course in the truest sense, an extension of the town itself. Golfers walk right off the fairways into the streets, and pedestrians walk right off the streets onto the fairways. When I rounded the corner of the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse behind the first tee, a foursome of golf-hungry Americans was waiting patiently while a woman pushed a pram across the fairway to the East Sands, the beach where they filmed the opening scene from Chariots of Fire. And right next to them, on the adjacent eighteenth green, the players coming in bowed and doffed their caps to a small crowd that had gathered to watch and cheer everyone’s final shots and putts.
The scene before me completely contradicted the American stereotype of golf as an exclusive game played in private sanctuaries. Even the hoity-toity members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, having just finished lunch, emerged from their venerable clubhouse, wiped the remaining Yorkshire pudding crumbs from their sweaters, and descended the few short steps from their door to the same first tee used by the general public. There they waited patiently, just as the Americans had, for yet another group of beachgoers to cross the fairway.
I felt I’d stumbled upon a separatist movement—a utopian, social-democratic golf experiment. But then I came to my senses and realized that I was the one who was part of the separatist movement. This is where golf had originated; these were the descendants of the people who invented it. If anyone had a right to say how the game was supposed to be played, they did.
I followed the road out along the first fairway between the caddie shack and the beach. A brisk wind was blowing in off the North Sea, stirring up whitecaps on the dark water. Choppy waist-high waves gnawed restlessly at the entire length of the East Sands—all the way out to the point where the Eden Estuary flows in behind St. Andrews’s four oldest courses—the Old, the New, the Jubilee, and the Eden. The courses, routed side by side, all run out to the estuary and back, but only the Old starts and finishes right in the heart of town, in front of the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse, the Hamilton Hall dormitory of St. Andrews University, and the golf shops and hotels along Links Road. This is because the other courses were added later, tacked onto the sides of the Old. By later I mean, in the case of the New and Jubilee, the 1890s. It sounds pretty funny calling a course that’s been around for more than a century the New, but it is new compared to the Old, which was first played in the 1400s.
I cut in to the second tee beside Swilcan Burn and walked up the fairway, away from town, toward a group of golfers playing with caddies. One of them, an American whose ball lay in the fringe a yard short of the putting surface, was squinting down at the grass.
“Where’s the green?” he asked.
I knew what he meant—the fairways and greens here are such a similar cut and color—a smooth, mottled green and brown—that it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, but that question was just too loaded, too typical of a dumb American for his caddie to resist. “It’s tha’ bit o’ grass with the flag in it!”
Everyone roared, including the guys on the third tee and the bystanders like me. The poor fellow hung his head and blushed. Watching the playful dynamic between the Scottish caddies and visiting Americans was too much for me to take. There was no way I was going to walk an entire eighteen without wanting in on the action. I turned and ran back to the first tee.
The caddie shack was in the midst of its usual midday chaos: golfers asking for caddies and the caddie master, Rick, scrambling to provide them. There was no mistaking Rick, because the yard was empty and he was simultaneously trying to placate the golfers (“We called ahead and specifically requested an experienced caddie!”) and convince the old veterans coming in off the course to go around again right away—in looper parlance, known as turning and burning. My timing couldn’t have been better.
During a short lull, I introduced myself. “Hello, Rick, my name is John Dunn. I e-mailed you in May from the States about caddying this summer.”
“Ah, yes. The American writer. Sorry, I meant to e-mail you back, but as you can see, we’re very busy.”
“If you need someone to work this afternoon . . .” He eyed me up and down. “Do you know the Old?”
I lied. “Oh, yes. Just finished walking it. Followed a group of players with caddies. Took lots of notes.”
He disappeared from the window and returned with an apron, a yardage book, and a towel. “You’re on the tee.”
I thought if I showed up I would get the job, but I didn’t think it would happen that quickly! I smiled and practically skipped to the tee. I also said a prayer. Please, dear God, don’t give me some know-it-all who wants the exact yardage to every bump and bunker.
Even in that short two-hole walk, I could tell that the Old was the one course in the world you did not want to go out blind on. It wasn’t hilly so much as pocked and rumpled like an unmade bed, and on many holes you couldn’t even see the fairway from the tee or clearly make out the shape of the green from the fairway. And the place was littered with bunkers positioned so counterintuitively (like across the entire middle of the fairway and on the backside of some random knoll) that no amount of innate golf sense could steer you through them. I wasn’t just afraid of guiding a player’s ball into a bunker, I was afraid of falling into one myself.
I walked up to the first tee, where the other caddies were gathered. I smiled and nodded, trying to appear amiable, but none of them smiled back. They looked me up and down in my fresh apron and towel and my brand-new St. Andrews visor. Their stony expressions needed no translation. Who’s this jackass dressed up like a St. Andrews caddie?
A Spanish tour guide walked over. (Tour guides often arrange tee times and caddies for groups, drive them down to the course, and see them off at the first tee.) With a heavy accent, he said, “I sorry to inform you gentlemen, but the players in this a group is from España. No one speak a much Englis. If you just please point and wave your hand, they will be very happy.”
Then he introduced each of us to our players. Mine was a beautiful woman named Sonia. She was twenty-eight, had lustrous, shoulder-length black hair, shining brown eyes, a freckled nose, and long gorgeous legs that sprouted from her tiny pleated skirt. She looked exactly like the Argentinean tennis player Gabriela Sabatini. Sonia held out her hand, giggled nervously, and said, “I spake a no Englis!”
Even if she did want to know which way a hole went, she couldn’t ask me! I looked to the heavens and whispered with utter sincerity, Thank you, God!
It’s not unusual for caddies to be a little territorial and inhospitable toward new hires, especially in the middle of the season, because new caddies mean fewer bags for the old caddies. It’s simple math. So I wasn’t surprised when the two older Scots in our group paid me little attention. I guess they figured that the best way to get rid of me was to ignore me, because I couldn’t possibly survive the Old on my own. I was thankful there was a young English caddie in the group named Norman, who saw me as more than just an opportunistic bag thief. He took pity on me and patiently answered my hundred questions. The best part was, I could ask him out loud right in front of our Spanish players, “Where does this hole go?” and they had absolutely no idea what I was saying.
But even with Norman’s help, I added about thirty strokes to Sonia’s score and unfailingly guided her into at least one bunker or gorse bush per hole. I would tell her “Zapatero” (the socialist prime minister of Spain) for left and “George Bush” for right. If I had to fine-tune her aim, I put my hands on her hips and moved her a little bit more to the left or right. The tall, dashing, dark-haired fellow who kept glower- ing at me turned out to be her fiancé.
I was at my worst on fourteen, when I steered Sonia right into Hell Bunker, an aptly named pit that is not only punishing, but invisible from the fairway. She’d followed my instructions perfectly—aimed straight for the pin and hit her best five wood of the day. She was very pleased with herself. We walked merrily down the fairway enjoying our now fluent wordless communication. She handed me her club and smiled. I shined it and put it back in the bag with loving care. She pointed to the town in the distance, took a deep breath and sighed. I smiled and nodded and sighed right along with her. All was right with the world. That is, until we crested a little knoll and found our path to the green blocked by a great sandy moat in which, barely visible at the bottom, snuggled against a ten-foot face of stacked sod, was her ball. Sonia turned to me puzzled. Had she spoken English, this is likely when she would have asked: “John, how come you aimed me straight for this gigantic bunker?”
But she didn’t speak English so she just accepted the wedge I handed her, climbed gamely down into the sand, and started swinging. One, two, three. She paused for a breath. Looked up at me exasperated, hands on her hips. Four, five, six. She was now so covered with sand her thick brown hair looked blond. But for all her efforts, the stubborn ball had barely moved, she’d only succeeded in digging a trench behind it. This was more than even beautiful, patient Sonia could take. She bent down, picked her ball up, threw it out of Hell Bunker and cried, “Inferno!” Which is probably exactly how that pit of despair got its name in the first place.
I felt terrible, but I have to admit, that little tantrum was the single cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Even the Scottish cad- dies, who made looking grumpy an art form, cracked a smile. At the end of the round, Sonia gave me a big, sandy hug and told me, through the tour guide, that I was the best caddie she’d ever had. I can’t even imagine who the worst was.
Golfers will tell you the real locals’ bar in St. Andrews is the Dunvegan, and it’s true, the Dunvegan has a ton of history and many Open Champions have raised their pints there, but the summer I was in St. Andrews, the bar where the caddies hung out was the Pilmour. So that’s where I headed to celebrate the successful navigation of my first loop on the Old. Once the Scottish caddies had a couple of pints in them, they seemed to forget that I was just a rotten bag thief. Their stony visages melted from within as the scotch and beer slowly warmed their bellies and cheeks. By the third drink, they were downright friendly, but a lot harder to understand, too. One of them sat down next to me and said, “Gar bar argh me yar America! Grot doan laird gore Tiger Woods. Em nye dot flog Augusta National.”
America, Tiger Woods, Augusta National? It was like a word-association game.
I nodded solemnly and said, “Aye. Tiger Woods. Augusta National.”
I decided to leave out America, figuring that was probably redundant. The caddie sitting on my other side nudged me and said, “Makin’ friends with Cartgate, are ya?”
“Who?”
He nodded to the caddie I’d just been speaking to, “Cartgate Kenny. He’s named after the Cartgate bunker on the third hole.”
“Why’s that?”
“He fell into it while caddying one day, clear from the top. A good six feet that! And with his man’s clubs on his back no less!”
“Fell into it?”
“Aye. His golfer turned ’round to ask Kenny for a read, but couldnae find ’im. Poor bastard looked everywhere. Finally he says, ‘Where’s Kenny gone?’ That’s when he heard Kenny say, ‘Down here, sir!’ And he looked over the edge, saw ’im lying in the sand.”
The caddie burst out laughing. “Isn’t tha’ right, Kenny? Backed clear off the edge of tha green and landed flat on tha bastard’s bag!”
Kenny raised his glass and smiled. He said something that sounded exactly like the last thing he’d said minus the recognizable part. But it hardly mattered if I understood a single word, because we’d downed enough pints now that our sparkling eyes and raised glasses said it all. Caddies! Brothers! One for all! All for one!
Sometime later I received a huge slap on the back that almost knocked me out of my seat. I was expecting it to be yet another burly Scotsman feeling congenial in the glow of a good buzz, but when I turned around, I was amazed to find myself looking at a little blue-eyed, blond-haired girl. By the look of her ruddy cheeks and shining eyes, she’d thrown back a few pints herself.
“You coming to Aikman’s?” she asked.
“Aikman’s? ”
“Aye. They say all roads lead to Rome. Well, in St. Andrews, all roads lead to Aikman’s!”
“They do?”
“Oh, stop your havering and get off your fannybaws! You comin’ or no’?”
And with that she marched out the door. I downed my pint and rushed to catch up.
The girl, who’s name was Dawnie, turned out to be a caddie. Female caddies aren’t unheard of; I’d met a few over the years. There’d been a Scottish girl from Dornoch down at Secession and a collegiate champion golfer at Bighorn, and there were quite a few girls at Bandon, but Dawnie was the first girl I met who acted like a caddie. She drank and swore and jawed with the best of them. In a bar full of boozing Bravehearts, she’d proved to be the alpha. She got me to jump to attention in three sentences and now I was following her up the street. And she wasn’t kidding about all roads leading to Aikman’s. Packs of merrymakers were marching toward the bar from every direction—from North Street, South Street, Market Street, and both ends of Greyfriars Gardens. Music poured out the windows, and people stumbled out into the night and stumbled back in. Dawnie took my arm and pulled me through the crowd to the bar, where she barked something and two pints of Guinness materialized in seconds.
“I ken tha bartender.”
“You what?”
“I know the bartender.”
That didn’t surprise me in the least. Dawnie seemed to know everyone, and when the doormen started kicking us out at two, she rallied a group around her and barked instructions.
“Dougie, you ge’ tha firewood, and don’ forget tha paper and matches! Tom, you ge’ tha beer! Pam, you grab tha bottle o whiskey at your flat. Me and John boy here will grab the fags. Meet at the Castle Sands in twenty.”
With that she dragged me out into the night again, up the street to the Shell station to buy smokes. She lit two and passed one to me as we walked toward St. Andrew’s Castle— the thousand-year-old fortress that lords it over a small beach known as the Castle Sands. We descended a dark, steep stone staircase to the empty beach, the crumbling turrets silhouetted against the moon above us. It wasn’t hard to imagine great fireballs and boiling oil and a hail of arrows raining down on an invading Viking fleet. But that night the sea was calm and the tide high; the water lapped gently against the soft sand. Within minutes the whole group arrived with all of the requested items, and in no time we were passing the whiskey bottle around the fire like a band of gypsies.
In the flickering light, I noticed a tattoo on Dawn’s ankle that looked suspiciously like the Winged Foot Golf Club logo. “Is that the . . . ?”
“Aye. ’Tis.”
“Fine golf course, lovely logo, too, but . . .”
“I lost a bet.”
“You wagered a tattoo on a golf match?”
“Nae. No’ a golf match. A drinking match! Some dobber from New York was braggin’ ’bout how he’d tanned ten pints tha nigh’ before, and I says, ‘I bet I can drink you under the table.’ Well, he took one look a’ me and laughed and said, ‘How much you want to bet?’ So I says, ‘If you fall on yer arse before I do, you get a tattoo of St. Andrew and the cross.’ And he says, “If you fall on your arse before I do, you get the Winged Foot.’ Turns out he was a fair swiller.”
As if to prove the point, she threw back another shot from the bottle and passed it to me. If that story was true (and it sounded like as good a reason as any to get a Winged Foot tattoo), that New York dobber must’ve been one hell of a swiller, because hours later, when Dawnie polished off the last splash of whiskey, the sky was turning gray and the water that had been such a gentle, reassuring presence the night before had disappeared, drained away to Norway or somewhere, exposing great fins of rock that looked like roots growing out from the foot of the castle. That was meant to be my first morning in the caddie yard, but after I stumbled back to my room, I slept clear through till the afternoon and limped down to the caddie shack around one, thinking, Great way to make a first impression!
