My First Green
Most people shudder at the thought of their first job. When my girlfriend was sixteen, she waitressed for two weeks at a Hooters-style restaurant called Twin Peaks. A friend of mine spent his teenage years back at his junior high, corralling kids in an afterschool program—keeping them off porn on the library computers, as he puts it. Another friend worked a weekend at a donut factory, punishment for stealing lip-gloss from Walmart. Between seventh and eighth grade, when I was thirteen, I spent a summer caddying at a private country club.
Child labor laws in Illinois allow for fourteen-year-olds to work in agricultural settings. I suppose there are plants on a golf course. Nevertheless, I was still a year shy of legality, and fifty years and a Rolex shy of knowing anything about golf. I’d heard the name Tiger Woods and seen the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, neither of which particularly intrigued me; the putt-putt course in Skokie could hold my interest until about the ninth hole. Luckily for me, Indian Hill didn’t have much by way of prerequisites. They took all kinds, namely those whose mothers called up and asked them to.
From the time I hit middle school, my mom was hell-bent on having me in the workforce. I’m not sure why she felt this impulse, beyond a deep-rooted disdain for idle hands. She was the living embodiment of the phrase: If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean, and until she could find someone else to take up the charge, she’d do it herself. If I was home for the day, unsupervised, she’d leave me with a double-digit list of chores: dust the picture frames, empty the dishwasher, clean the gutters, drink two full glasses of skim milk. Sometimes it seemed like she kept our Tribune subscription just so I’d have to take out the recycling. Transport us two hundred years back and I’m sure she’d be the first to sign me up for a summer intensive in the mineshaft.
In the summer of 2006, she upped her game. My guess is that she learned of Indian Hill from my friend TJ, who’d been working there as a caddy for the past year. According to his mom, a kid could earn thirty dollars carrying a bag for eighteen holes. Once you got a reputation, you could carry two bags—sixty dollars. A round of golf took three hours; that meant you could ostensibly go out morning and afternoon and net a total of one hundred and twenty dollars. That was money lying on the putting green. Perhaps it didn’t occur to her that TJ was twice my size, with enough hair on his ass to mistake him for Bigfoot, and that he actually liked golf. More likely it did occur to her, and she thought the only reason I always had a book in my hands was because no one had replaced it with a five iron.
Word around the club was that Indian Hill had served as the inspiration for Caddyshack:that Bill Murray had worked there as a teen, and that many of the names used in the movie were former members, slightly altered to stall legal action. If there was any truth in this, it’d been quite a while since the glory days—no Snickers in the pool, no Rodney Dangerfield doing his act. The clubhouse was a genteel, single-story compound, all white and windowed, overlooking sprawling lawns and manicured sand traps. A thin lane circled the perimeter, populated by Gothic mansions and luxury cars. It was the type of place I’d driven past thousands of times, but never envisioned myself inside of.
Orientation was a two-day crash course in the multipurpose room, where I retained nearly nothing. But I didn’t necessarily need to: all the clubs were labeled, and the only math required was adding strokes (or subtracting them, if that’s what your golfer wanted). The dress code was a white polo shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, provided by you; one pocket held a scorecard and golf pencil, the other an extra ball, tee, and marker. “If you’re around long enough, you’ll earn one of these,” the caddy master told us, showing off a soccer penny with the Indian Hill crest embossed on the chest, a pouch at the base for holding your wares. They wanted to make sure you were the real deal before they offered you one. Until then you were just a kid in a polo.
The caddy master was an older Latino man with a perpetual smirk, the kind that said he’d seen a lot of contenders come and go and now was the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. I might as well have introduced myself as Chaff the way I was feeling. He led us to the infamous caddy shack: a small, windowless building filled with grimy light and metal chairs. One wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, making the space look like a cross between a barre studio and a torture chamber. “This is where you’ll come every day at 6:30AM sharp,” he said. “You’re not here at 6:30AM, you’re not going out.” I instantly set about calculating what time I’d have to leave my house in order to arrive at 6:31AM.
Next to the entrance was a service window that looked in on the kitchen. The shack was beside the ninth hole, and thus served as a way station where members could order food and drinks. “They’ll make you as many hot dogs as you like, plus unlimited soda,” the caddy master said, pointing to a machine. “Though I wouldn’t have the soda. The thing’s infested with ants.” He filled a cup with Pepsi and showed us. Tiny black creatures swam in the syrup.
We walked the course, toured the locker room, ended in the caddy master’s office. “You come here at the end of a round and I’ll pay you thirty dollars,” he said. There was no mention of two bags, let alone two rounds. But I wasn’t about to ask. Thirty dollars was a lot of money. But it wasn’t like I needed it. I already had a GameCube and a Blockbuster account. The only thing I could feasibly see myself buying was an ant-less soda from 7/11. That was the weird thing about my mom’s mentality: it wasn’t about the money. It was more that we weren’t the type of people who sat around enjoying summer. We weren’t, for lack of a better term, country club people.
I wish I could claim that for the next three months I rose at 5:30AM daily, hopped on my ten-speed, and rode the two uphill miles to Indian Hill. There’s a chance I did at first. But soon I negotiated down to three days a week. My mom’s typical bullet points wore thin: she hadn’t paid for anything, and talk of commitment and responsibility rang hollow when arguing for a pastime of the idle rich. Because I said so didn’t work on a seventh grader, particularly one you’d given a cell phone. The greatest hindrance, however, was that I hardly got out anyway. The problem was that few members golfed during the week, and those that did had a favorite caddy. The real cash was made on the weekends. But Saturdays belonged to my dad, and nobody expected me to work on Sunday. That left Monday through Friday, when Indian Hill was the proverbial ghost course.
But even without customers, there was no evading those three days. To my mom’s credit, it never once crossed my mind to simply not go: to find a bench, wait until she left for work, then slink back home. She’d raised a thoroughly American boy—one who didn’t want to do anything, but also didn’t have the chutzpah to weasel his way out of it.
Every morning, as promised, the caddy master would walk in at 6:30AM with a clipboard and a bucket of balls. He’d reach into the bucket and begin tossing them out, each printed with a number, recording names as he went. In a sense it was a lottery, though realistically only the first five got chosen. Some caddies left within minutes of arriving.
I absolutely dreaded this ritual, though not because I dreaded going out. I dreaded being made to catch a flying white dot under the watchful eye of my peers. Hand-eye coordination had never been my forte, nor hurled objects; during my short-lived soccer career, I’d been known to shield my head in defense against a throw-in. It seemed like common sense to me, but to others it seemed “weak” and “effeminate.” As a new teen, it was already clear that life was just going to be a series of people throwing things at you—keys, fruit, heirlooms—with the understanding that if you didn’t catch it, there must be something wrong with your wiring.
At first I’d stick around the caddy shack for a few hours—eat a morning hot dog, pick an insect from a glass of Sierra Mist. There was a television, but it was often monopolized by a gang of avid soccer fans, pounding their feet and clapping their hands at those terrifying throw-ins. Even TJ, my point of entry for this profession, started ignoring me; he was on the precipice of high school, and had perhaps realized that our height and hair difference wouldn’t do him any favors in the teenage jungle. In a couple weeks I was biking home by 8AM, with a solid gross of zero dollars and a lifetime proclivity for leaving work early.
I’ve made about a million lattes in my life, and so at some point I lost track of the output. But because I was such an ineffective caddy, with such little experience, I remember nearly every round I worked, even as two decades separate me from Indian Hill. If it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, it’d take me roughly fifteen months of continuous caddying to reach anything near competence. Though Malcolm Gladwell might rethink that number if he ever saw me on the green.
The first time I got out was with an older caddy, one whose perfect stubble and carefully coiffed crew cut made him indistinguishable from a golfer, save for his hard-earned penny. “I’d suggest the four wood, sir,” he’d say to his liege, a nondescript white guy whose paunch pressed against his polyester polo. “The wind is turning east.” He’d hold a hand to his brow at tee off, the ball sailing into blue, then nod appreciatively. “Great shot.”
“You just gotta treat them like kings,” he told me later as we stood in the shade while our members frustrated themselves on the fairway. “They just want to feel like big men out here.” If that was the job, my guy didn’t need much help: he’d hardly looked at me since shaking my hand on the first hole. Still, the veteran caddy seemed like a good resource. My most pressing question was: “Where do I pee?”
“Find a bush,” he shrugged, hocking a loogie into the grass. It seemed counterintuitive to publicly drop trou in a place so obsessed with pomp and circumstance. But then again, exposing your junk without any shame was part of what membership bought you.
The second time I got out was with a foursome, all chapped skin and waggling jowls. My golfer was a stout, stocky man with a halo of dark hair, his bald spot shining in the sun. At every other hole he’d reach inconspicuously into his bag for a tin of tobacco, pinching out a thimbleful and tucking it behind his gums. I’d never seen chaw before, but to my mind it was proof enough of a depraved lifestyle; he might as well have taken out a spoon and a syringe. He and his friends howled, told dirty jokes, seemed less interested in the game than in the fact that they had the free time to play it. The heat was grueling, the strap sticky on my shoulder; often I thought that thirty dollars wasn’t enough to spend three hours in this environment, even if it was minimum wage. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen adults act this way: around only each other, not catering their words to the kids that surrounded them. But I guess I wasn’t a kid in their eyes; they didn’t see themselves as a corrupting influence. Besides, my shock was somewhat feigned. This was ammunition for why I shouldn’t be there.
Not every member at Indian Hill confirmed my beliefs—that this was Xanadu, and I was the boy with the wine jug. One morning my number was low, and a man arrived for a solo round. He was around my father’s age: trim, quiet, same polo and khakis but wearing it like a prescribed uniform. He didn’t say much until the fifth hole, when he asked my advice on the putting green. I admitted I didn’t know. “Take a look,” he said, drawing me over so I could see the route between his ball and the hole. “What happens if I aim straight in? See the slope?” I saw the slope; I knew he’d have to curb it to the right so that it’d roll where he wanted. I pointed, hoping this was what he wanted to hear. He took the shot and made it.
He did this several times over the course of our round, always using the Socratic method. Part of me thought he’d requested an inexperienced caddy so he could teach a few things; he was clearly a stellar shot, much better than the dolts who typically came through, and so it wasn’t like he needed the help. I couldn’t see why anyone would want this, but it made me forget about the money, and the heat, and the fact that every moment out here felt tinged with the kind of anxiety that I already got my fair share of at thirteen. When we reached the caddy shack, he asked what I wanted—anything other than hot dogs and sodas had to be purchased by your golfer, though I’d never been so lucky. I said I was fine, then entered the shack as the cook called me over. “From him,” he said, handing me a Gatorade and pointing to my golfer at his table. I remember almost nothing that he taught me. But I remember that the Gatorade was blue.
I’m sure there’s something to the game of golf beyond old white dudes getting away from their families and staving off death—beyond pictures of politicians and oil barons grinning with their clubs. There’s probably a book out there that details all the minutiae, connecting the sport to the sublime. I’ve read enough about tennis to now view it as an act of mental and physical strain, balletic and breathtaking, more than discussions about clay versus grass or what you’re wearing to Wimbledon. I imagine golf is the same, even if you can be in awful shape to do it. When I was in college, right after my grandma died, my grandpa took my cousins and me to the range to hit a few balls and have lunch. I suspect I enjoyed this, but what I remember isn’t the slice of a wedge carving out your follow-through, or an object hit as hard as humanly possible drifting across the sky. I remember sitting in the café beforehand, eating a hamburger off a tiny paper plate, sipping lemonade with a thankful eye toward the bathroom, sensing that this time with him was finite but would live in me forever. For that kind of foresight, I’d happily remain an indoor kid.
One day the caddy master stopped me as I was heading out with a large group. “Your guy wants a cart,” he said. I stared at him. We hadn’t covered that in orientation.
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Get him one.” He pointed to a lot beside the clubhouse, then reentered his office.
The other caddies were busying themselves with the bags. I took one aside and asked for advice. “Sweet deal,” he replied. “Just go up there and bring one down.”
A dozen carts sat aligned in the lot. I’d never driven so much as a go-kart. The route was downhill, our first tee box situated on the other side of the clubhouse. I climbed behind the wheel and studied the pedals: an unmarked one that had to be gas, one that said Brake, and one that said Reverse. I pushed Reverse and backed out of the spot, aiming the cart toward the crew.
It was easier than I thought. The cart sailed smoothly down the hill, then across the lawn, where I pulled up beside the box and hit the brake. The other guys scowled at my good fortune. This was a sweet deal, I thought. Perhaps I’d even be allowed to ride in the cart, serve purely as a consultant. “See that slope?” I’d say, “You’re gonna want to aim to the right.”
But the caddies were still scowling—or maybe they were wincing. Now the players were too. They weren’t looking at me but rather over my shoulder. I turned to look, and that was when I saw it. The practice green, where golfers warmed up before a game. Two tire tracks ran through the middle, parallel lines of dark green etched into the tender grass. My insides plummeted. I was going to need more than a bush the way my sphincter was acting.
Other people stopped to watch too. At the top of the hill, a group of men rose from the patio and walked to the precipice, gazing down at my handiwork. They were old, dressed in matching Indian Hill polos. One lifted his sunglasses to get a better look. I remembered what the caddy master had told us that morning. The board of directors was visiting today.
I don’t think I grasped the weight of what I’d done until I saw the caddy master charging across the lawn. He reached the hilltop and began his descent, sliding on his treads as he barreled toward the bottom. Without looking at me he climbed into the cart and spun it, repositioning the vehicle beside the box, one foot left in the grass as he pivoted. It was almost graceful the way he moved, as if the entire act hinged upon his centrifugal force. He stood and came to me, the board still staring. “Never,” he said in a low, murderous tone, “ever drive on the green.” Then he turned and huffed his way back up the hill. The directors went back to their breakfast.
If my golfer had an opinion about this, he kept it to himself. He cruised around in his cart while I trailed behind, unsure if the dizziness I felt was sunstroke or embarrassment.
When I arrived at the caddy master’s office, I assumed I was in for a reaming. Forget the thirty dollars—I’d be lucky to leave with my life. But now he was smiling, seated with a couple other caddies. “The chauffer himself!” he yelled when he saw me, bursting into laughter. “You’ll never believe what this kid did,” he told the group. “In front of the goddamn board of directors!”
I watched the money in his hand, waiting while he told the story. His audience guffawed, slapped their knees, wiped their eyes. “I was ready to kill him!” he cried, waving the thirty bucks around. He finally handed over the cash. If the humiliation showed on my face, he didn’t register it. I turned and left, tucking the bills into my pocket. “And remember!” he called after me. “Stay off the green!”
I’d like to say this was the last time I caddied. But I don’t think it was. It might have been the last time I went out, but I’m not even sure about that. In all likelihood I kept biking over, kept catching my lottery balls, kept praying for the highest number, until the season ended and I could hang up my polo. I never earned a green penny, and wouldn’t be back the following year to try. High school was mercifully starting and my mom signed me up for summer school. I always was more comfortable in academia.
Two years later I was invited to a homecoming after-party, held serendipitously at one of the mansions surrounding Indian Hill. After the requisite amount of awkward small talk, we took to the links, where someone had stashed a few bricks of Busch Light and a fifth or two of vodka. I had my first sip of beer out there—warm, repulsive, held in my hand like a live grenade. Greg Tallent circulated with a cigar, his speech impediment more prominent than usual: “Anyone got a wight?” No conscious part of me recognized that I’d been here before, one of the few instances in which it felt so easy to separate who I’d been from who I wanted to become: a customer over a caddy, someone whose uniform fit just right, neither employee nor interloper. The cops showed up, or we told ourselves they did; we ran through the fields like wild animals, shirttails billowing in the wind, cutting across fairways without a care in the world. I was shoeless by then, my socks soaked through with dew, feet frigid as ice. But you wouldn’t have known it by the lightness of my stride.
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