The Totem Pole

I don’t care what anyone says, caddying is an honorable trade. It’s not as thankless as say a pilot or police officer, where the only attention you get is either when you kill somebody or save somebody’s life, but it’s pretty close in my eyes. I always wanted to try it, and thought that I would be pretty good at it. “Why do you think that?”, one might ask. And my answer to that at the time was just blind confidence. Isn’t that what caddying is about? Considering I play to about a 2 or 3 handicap on any given day, I felt confident in saying yes when a friend of mine, the assistant professional at The California Golf Club of San Francisco, asked if I wanted to caddy for one of their upcoming tournaments: The California Invitational. The name even sounded prestigious. Three days, 54 holes, 27th best course in America, and $800 in my pocket. What could be the downside?

As a first time caddy, the question wasn’t if I was going to forget something but what I was going to forget. It turned out to be my rangefinder, which is a pretty important piece of the puzzle when trying to answer “What’s my number here?” I asked around, and finally resulted to peaking my head into the pro shop to see if they had an extra. Mid sentence I heard “Not in the pro shop please”, from the staff member at the front desk. I was confused as to why he had verbally shoved me aside like a child who had just walked into his father’s office while on a company call. Then I looked down to realize that I was in my bleach white, caddie jumpsuit. The proverbial light bulb went off, and headed back to the caddy shack with furrowed brows and an intimidated mindset of hierarchical exclusivity, now being painfully aware that all of us caddies were at the bottom of the totem pole.

The bag I was carrying on my left shoulder belonged to a three time PGA Tour event winner and a three time Nationwide Tour event winner. He was playing with classic, lead taped Titleist blades from what I could guess hadn’t left that bag since the mid 2000s. I leaned over to him while on the first tee and tried to earn some good graces by saying, “These look like some old trustworthy’s, eh?”

“Yeah that’s for sure. These are the clubs that I made the cut with at the 2013 US Open.” So I realized right off the bat that if I gave him any reads around his home course, I wouldn’t really be helping, I would just look like a clown dressed as a caddie. The bag on my right shoulder belonged to the CEO of some crazy tech company I didn’t recognize or understand. What I did  understand though was that he was a member at not only the Cal Club, but a myriad of other crazy clubs including Friar’s Head on Long Island, Nanea on the Big Island of Hawai’i, and Sand Hills in Nebraska. “Get to know that guy”, followed by some winks was the advice given to me by the assistant pro that morning. “Are you a member anywhere down in the Monterey area yet?”, asked my other player, me trying to hide my inadvertent wince at the word “yet”.

“Yeah I’m a member at… What’s that place called again? Oh yeah, The Preserve. But that doesn’t really count.” What was the unspoken game here? Was there something that I was missing? Was there a special way to rub the jeanie bottle where if I got my players to laugh enough, and I somehow demonstrated that I knew more about golf than the average bloke, that I might be able to level up in the golfing world? It seemed as though I was encouraged in being Danny Noonan trying to get the caddy scholarship by brown nosing Judge Smails. “The world needs ditch diggers too, Nico.”

Ever since I started to pay attention to architecturally intriguing courses in America, I had given god status to the membership of clubs like Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Augusta, and other halls of exclusive golfing glory. How do you get into a place like that? I had no clue, and honestly still don’t understand how someone is able to be an earth dweller like me and then, out of the blue, be able to ascend on a chariot of fire into golfing heaven. All I knew was that there was a smell around the club that reeked of entitlement and insecurity, and I didn’t find it appealing. Instead, I tried to focus on the course, which was as close to perfection that I had ever seen. California might have some crazy taxes, massive wildfires, and traffic that is reminiscent of a parking lot, but it seems to all be worth it when you show up to this place. The Cal Club hired Kyle Phillips in 2007 to give it a “facelift” as one of the lifelong starters told me on the first tee with a Cohiba in his mouth at 8:00 in the morning. But when you start to walk around this course, I think a complete facial reconstructive surgery is a more apt description. The bunkers weren’t only beautiful but they were also perfectly placed, originally crafted by Mackenzie himself. The playing surfaces were so firm that I was able to throw a ball down on the fairway and it be able to bounce back up to my knees. There was not an inch wasted on the entire property, with high ridges and plateaus being used for the tees, and the large, mellow bowls underneath them being used for the greens. The average round there is about three and a half hours, which makes sense when you figure out that the green to tee transition is glitch-less. Every time I would drag both bags over the crest of the 18th fairway, the amphitheater containing the 18th green, 12th tee, 11th green, and the 10th tee would consistently take my breath away. The flags of the countries represented in the tournament were flying high above the course, the Australian flag being hoisted for only one, special member (his name rhyming with Ian Baker Finch). The early 20th century clubhouse looming in the background was a site to truly take in. But I had to make sure to take it in quicker than my players, I still had approach shots to pace off and clubs to clean.    

I finished my final loop and got myself a beer after being told that there was a secret stash of Coors Banquet hidden in the air vents of the caddy shack. And as I sat down on the pho-leather couch and watched the constant loop of Alan Jackson music videos, I couldn’t help but contemplate what had just transpired over those last three rounds. The golf was other worldly. That’s really all that motivated me to take the gig in the first place. The caddies that I met were some of the most honest and down to earth people I had ever come across, kindly showing me the ropes to what they had spent their adult lives perfecting. But as I was walking back to my car, appropriately parked in the very back corner of the lot (I guess it was frowned upon to park where members could see you put on your jumpsuit), something caught my eye as I took one last look at the clubhouse. On the front door, that I can only imagine weighed 500 pounds and was probably built from some famous shipwreck, there was a little gold sign that read “Gentlemen Only”, and that about summarized the culture there.

It was a boys club. They were resemblant of the cool kids on the playground that hogged all the balls but didn’t let you play with any. Everyone likes being a part of an exclusive group. Everyone wants to be identified as someone who gets to play at a place like the Cal Club where everyone is there to serve you at every point of the finger. But I felt that I identified more with those less noticed. The caddies being able to double bag as much as they could so that they could put that much more money into their children’s college fund, or the bartender who’s joy and life mission it is to make that one person feel special and valued. How about that one guy on the maintenance crew who just can’t leave that one bunker yet because he hadn’t raked it perfectly? These are the people that make places like the Cal Club function day to day. These people are my heroes, and the god given status I had gifted to the members has now changed hands to those behind the scenes. And to them I say, “I’ll clean your clubs any time.”