ON ENTERING the sacred grounds of the Medinah Country Club you could be forgiven for thinking that you had made a wrong turn somewhere off the I90 west out of Chicago and missed the golf course. You see, your first sighting of the clubhouse is of a minaret protruding out of some tall oak trees. Was I approaching a mosque in Cairo?
A slight turn in the driveway and a dome arcs gently away from the minaret and leads onto cathedral-like arches. A cathedral in Rome, perhaps? Is this a Disneyland compilation of replica places of worship, or the venue for the 81st PGA championship? An oversized security guard in undersized uniform waddles in my direction and bellows "Credentials, Sir". A quick exit from fantasy land: I am indeed at venue for the final major of the century. Unfortunately, my only impression of this imposing structure was to be from the outside. Caddie credentials in this part of the world get the toter as far as the bag drop building to the side of the clubhouse, well clear of the sacred shrine.
The bag drop building is one that God or Allah has long since forsaken, aesthetics had taken a cameo role to make way for this functional structure. So I position myself as comfortably as I can on a rack designed to hold a golf bag, and not the sherpa who is about to carry it for 18 holes, and wait for my master to come and rescue me.
On registering, I was presented with a list of "caddie regulations". This is a lengthy document of "Don'ts": Don't go near the clubhouse, don't walk on the greens to check pin placements, don't stand on the practice putting green to retrieve putts for your player, don't get in a courtesy car. . . to name but a few. The "Do's" made a considerably shorter list; Do wear the caddie bib (i.e. be a walking sandwich board for the PGA). Do look and act in a professional manner (while perched like a vulture on a bag rack) as you are waiting to be claimed by your owner. We top caddies could be viewed by the public preening ourselves for the day's round on our caddie perches while our players were busy in the locker room organising the bag i.e. doing for themselves what they pay us to do for them. The most complicated rule of the week was that involving the wearing of shorts. Shorts were forbidden. Unless "the heat index was predicted to be over 100 degrees, then all caddies would be permitted to wear their own tan coloured, hemmed shorts which would not be more than two inches above knee length". Thankfully this "lenient compromise" by the PGA didn't come into play last week.
The spectacle of confused caddies with thermometers and calculators trying to work out this heat index formula and then change into their tailored shorts while balanced delicately on the bag stand would have been altogether too embarrassing.
The draw was made early last week and everyone had plenty of time to muse over their pairings and comment accordingly. Stephen Leaney figured that he had got the "hotdog draw". Nick Price and Vijay Singh were in the group before his anonymous pairing with Dennis Paulson and George Bryan. Tom Watson and Tiger Woods were in the following group.
Stephen figured that the spectators would be queueing for hot-dogs when his match came through: "Come on honey, let's grab a dawg, I never heard of these guys, but Woods is next."
Greg got paired with a tour player whose name sounded like a bourbon whiskey, Rich Beem, and a club pro from New York named Mike Gilmore. Walking down the third hole in our first round, I establish that Gilmore's caddie and father is an Irish immigrant. Not uncommon in these parts to come across an Irish immigrant, but I soon discovered a special connection with Mike senior. Mike grew up in Dublin, Clontarf to be precise, where I also grew up.
Mike emigrated to America 42 years ago. He worked as a cop in downtown New York for 25 years. He introduced his son to golf when he was 16 years old. After his first game of golf, Mike junior abandoned football, basketball and baseball to concentrate on his golf. Now he is the head pro at the Wheatley Hills country club in New York.
Mike senior, having begun his caddying career in Royal Dublin almost half a century ago, with a few decades career break, made his debut in a Major on his son's bag last week. On his son's bag, as opposed to in it: unlike Scott Spence's father who made his PGA debut in his son's bag. The father of the club pro from Minnesota died last April and Scott decided to carry his dad's ashes around Medinah in a film canister in his bag.
Looking at the ecclesiastic style of the clubhouse, maybe it was a fitting end for Scott Spence's father.
