Series: Diary of A Golf College Student
Article 8: Caddying at the Country Club

by Jonathan Gibbins

Back to previous entry

With the weekends off to relax or practice or do whatever, the golf team has the chance to earn some money caddying. Basically, the deal is this: Carry two bags for guys who prefer to walk (not a buggy) and earn a minimum of $30 for each bag, not bad.

So, we set off to The Country Club of Florida, a private club tucked away in the outskirts of the city. The name suggests some rich members, and I certainly got that. The membership fee is $50,000 a year and you cannot play it unless you’re a member. Like most Florida courses, it is woven around some of the most luxurious homes I have ever seen. Most of them owned by members.

I swagger around the pro’s shop and check out the facilities in the clubhouse, which gives me a joint sense of being in Harrods and Augusta National. Afraid to touch anything, I leave.

The real treat for me comes when I lay my eyes on the putting green because I have seen snooker tables look a lot worse, and the great thing was that all the greens on the course were the same. They looked artificial and I was almost apologetic to walk freely on them with my spikes.

I meet my “clients” for the round, which turn out to be a husband and wife. They are an odd looking couple as he was small and nerdy looking, and she was 6 ft tall with a face that would frighten a baby. Of course, to be members at this club I assumed them to be fairly wealthy and this turned out to be a huge understatement as the husband was President of AT & T, the largest phone company in America. I calculated that if he wanted to, he could buy a small country or two, which was something I had never really thought of before.

The standard of golf was not that good and a greater annoyance came because the husband hooked and the wife sliced. This sent me zig-zagging my way down the hole like Seve on a bad day.

The temperature rose throughout the morning and I was glad to ease my shoulders of the bags when I finally trudged into the locker room. I meet my team-mates, and we discuss who got the biggest tip.

With the hard work behind us, we stay and do some putting on the perfect greens. I find that it is really hard to miss putts when you’re on great surfaces like these after reading it right. The pros are great putters, but they do get the advantage of near perfect greens. The other thing I start to notice is that on greens with “grain” you can lie the grass your own way by hitting the same putt over and over. A faint line appears and the ball sticks to it like glue. This makes you look world class because it is almost impossible to miss. I heard somewhere that Tiger Woods does this and can make 600 in a row one handed!

Come back to the site next week and read the next installation of life on a golf scholarship!