By Owen Seman

GolfWRX Contributor

I arrive in the parking lot of my country club around 6:55 a.m., in time to grab a cup of coffee and prepare for my 7:30 tee time.  The lot is virtually empty, except for the vehicles of the grounds crew and some pro shop staff who are setting up for the morning rush.  I exit my car and hear a familiar voice call my name “Hey O, what’s up? Just you and Patrick this morning? Whaddaya say we take a quick spin?” I tell him I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This isn’t the voice of another member looking for a game, this is the voice of Chuckie, a longtime caddy at my country club, and a person who has become as much of the country club experience to me as the golf course itself.

The game the way it was meant to be played

Everybody sees PGA Tour professionals playing golf every weekend and sees their caddies lugging those huge staff bags emblazoned with equipment manufacturer logos.  Tour caddies can be seen giving advice on yardages, wind changes and even reading greens.  Has anyone ever wondered why the greatest players on earth need advice on aspects of their golf game, let alone from someone paid to carry their bag?  I think the question could be easily answered by anybody who has experienced a round of golf with a good caddy. A caddy you know. A caddy you trust.  It is how the game was meant to be played.

It goes without saying that the game of golf was designed to be played on foot.  Motorized golf carts are a relatively recent enhancement (some say detraction) to a sport that has roots dating back to Scottish sheep herders who, unless they decided to mount a sheep (insert fraternity hazing joke here) and ride it around the golf course, played the game by walking the course.  At 34 years old, I have had carts as a part of the game for my entire golfing life.  I did not, however, grow up relying on them.  My father got me started playing this wonderful game at a very young age, and we always walked.  I would carry my clubs and my father had a pull cart he bought at a flea market (he was quite proud of that purchase, I must say).  When I really got the golf bug around the age of 14 or so, I scored my first job working at a country club (the club I now belong to), working in the pro shop, and I began to get to know the caddies that were at the club every weekend.  I got to know them from a side that most members never will, and when I decided to join the club the caddy program was a major part of my decision.  I knew that I wanted to walk any time I could, and our club has a number of very experienced caddies, as well as a lot of young kids who are just getting started.

I have since learned that I seem to be in the minority and that walking, especially with a caddy, seems to be a dying tradition in golf these days.  To me, there are several factors that are leading to the country club caddy’s demise, and they are pretty simple:

Convenience

It is just so easy to hop in a golf cart and drive up to the first tee. Many golfers that have never experienced a round of golf with a caddy do not realize that they are actually missing out on something special by taking the easy route.  For those of us that lead hectic lives, it provides an opportunity for more exercise than your typical round of golf (anybody that has walked a golf course in Western Pennsylvania knows that this can certainly be described as exercise) .  But for what it lacks in convenience, walking easily makes up for in experience.  Walking provides more interaction with the golf course itself.  There are so many nuances that are missed when you fly by in a motorized cart, driving on the cart path, going directly to your ball and then on to another player’s ball.  When walking, you see it all with your eyes and you feel it all with your feet.  As you approach your ball, you get an opportunity to survey the ground and envision your shot.  Moreover, when you have a caddy, you have someone to bounce ideas off.  Now maybe you don’t want to ask the 16-year-old kid that is in his first year as a caddy whether or not you have a flyer lie, but if you have an experienced caddy you certainly can. An experienced caddy knows the course, knows the rough, knows the bunkers and most importantly knows the greens.  The experienced caddy is a sounding board and many times a confidence builder.  No golf cart can read a green, nor can a golf cart bolster your confidence in a particular shot or a putt like an experienced caddy can. No amount of convenience can replace the benefits of having an experienced caddy on your bag .

Economics

At most country clubs, a large portion of the clubs’ profits are derived from cart fees.  Members typically pay a set amount in dues each month, and in turn their greens fees are free, so to speak.  The cart, however, is an extra charge.  A busy weekend can bring in thousands of dollars in cart fees. When a player decides to take a caddy, however, the club loses those cart fees.  Therefore, because many country clubs in today’s economy are treading water financially, caddies can be viewed as a detriment to the clubs’ finances.  Every year at my club someone will raise the issue of eliminating caddies for the sole purpose of increasing club revenue.

While I certainly respect the club’s need to generate cash flow, I believe it is lost on most members, particularly those who choose not to walk, that there are other people who depend on this game for financial help, namely the very caddies they want to eliminate.  Most of the caddies at my club have regular full time jobs and they come out on the weekends to make some extra money.  This money, while it is not their sole source of income, goes a long way in today’s economy toward supporting a family.  Some would even do it for free because they genuinely enjoy it (my man Chuckie, for instance), but for the most part the money earned while caddying allows them some financial freedom not provided by their regular job. Caddies with young children or kids in college can always use a few hundred extra dollars a month.  Maybe they just use their caddy money to go play golf themselves because their regular job doesn’t provide enough income to have a hobby as expensive as golf. The money earned by them is just as important as the revenue lost by the club not receiving cart fees.

Pace of Play

There is a common misconception that walking is somehow slower than riding in a cart.  There are aspects of this argument that certainly hold some weight, for instance, if you are playing on a golf course with nobody ahead of you and nobody behind you.  This is simply because it gets you to the ball faster. In a normal round of golf, however, this isn’t the case.  I have never had an issue where walking resulted in slow play.  Slow play results in slow play.  Extensive reading of greens and pre-shot routines result in slow play, not walking.  In fact, walking can actually speed up some of those areas of the game, because as you walk to your ball you have more than enough time to envision the shot and decide what course of action to take.  Once at your ball, you get a yardage and you should be ready to pull the trigger.  Same goes for putting.  When you arrive at the green in a golf cart, you are off to the side and you have to walk to your ball, then survey the putt.  When walking, you are naturally surveying the putt as you walk to your ball.  If your ball is positioned past the pin, you get a read from the opposite side of the hole as you approach.  You get a much better feel for the green and slope when you walk up to the green than when you approach from the cart path.  All of these things, I would argue, would help to speed up the pace of play.

Of course there are a lot of people who have no interest in the overall experience of a round of golf, and they are simply out there to drink beer and hack it around.  But judging by my experience on GolfWRX, I suspect that much of the readership appreciates the game and its roots.  Therefore, I am writing this article to seek some opinions and input on the issue of caddies and on walking in general.  How many people walk?  How many people belong to country clubs that have caddy programs?  If so, is it a thriving program or is it dying a slow death as I suspect many are?  If you do take a caddy, do you have a particular caddy that you’ve established a relationship, or will any caddy do for you?

To conclude, if you haven’t experienced a round of golf with a good caddy on your bag, do me a favor and give it a try.  Do it just once, and see what you think of it.  I, for one, have established very strong relationships with several caddies at my club.  I consider them friends, not simply employees of the club.  When I ask for help reading a green, I genuinely want their input.  They know my game and I know they know my game.  A significant level of trust that has been built up, not overnight, but over time.

I have a tendency to let the game get the best of me, especially between the ears.  There is something very comforting about walking to the tee box after having a bad hole and hearing a familiar voice say, “Don’t worry about it O, make a good swing here and we’ll get it back.”  For me, you cannot put a price on that and no amount of convenience would change my mind.

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