An American Caddie in St. Andrews: Growing Up, Girls, and Looping on the Old Course Read online

  GOTHAM BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.

  Copyright © 2013 by Oliver Horovitz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Insert photograph on page 1 (middle) copyright © Rory Jackson; bottom photograph on page 1 copyright © Lindsay Allen; top two photographs on page 2 copyright © Matt Fouchek; bottom photograph on page 2 copyright © Gillian Horovitz; second photograph on page 3 courtesy of St. Andrews Link Trust; top photograph on page 4 copyright © Getty Images, Richard Heathcote; middle photograph on page 4 copyright © Israel Horovitz; bottom photograph on page 4 copyright © Greg Savidge; top photograph on page 5 copyright © Kenny Goosen; all other photographs are courtesy of the author.

  Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Horovitz, Oliver.

  An American caddie in St. Andrews : growing up, girls, and looping on the old course / Oliver Horovitz.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-59240-729-3 (hardback)

  1. Horovitz, Oliver. 2. Caddies—United States—Biography. 3. Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. 4. Saint Andrews Links (St. Andrews, Scotland) I. Title.

  GV964.H67A3 2012

  796.352092—dc23

  [B]

  2012029331

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity.

  In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers;

  however, the story, the experiences, and the words

  are the author’s alone..

  To Uncle Ken.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you!

  I blame me for choosing you!”

  —What Seve Ballesteros once yelled to his caddie after a bad clubbing

  PROLOGUE

  “Please welcome your 2003 graduates!”

  The raspy voice of our principal, Stanley Teitel, booms into the loudspeaker. Jack Welch, our class day speaker, takes a seat, having just finished his speech. I’m pretty sure he’s the CEO of General Electric. I know he just talked about GE washing machines, a lot. It’s 10:12 A.M., June 25. I’m onstage at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, trumpet on my lap, facing three thousand fellow Stuyvesant High School students, parents, and teachers, all assembled for our graduation ceremony. It’s ridiculously hot. My cell phone vibrates, signaling a call that could define my life. I’m waiting to hear from Harvard College’s admission office. I’ve been on their waiting list for the past three months, and they’re supposed to let me know today if I’ve been admitted. As the orchestra strikes up a rousing march, I exit stage left, semi-discreetly, and take the call. It’s Sally Champagne, Harvard’s admissions officer. The news is good. I’ve been moved off their wait list: I’m in. But Sally Champagne keeps talking. There’s a small catch: All class of 2007 spots have been filled. I’ve been accepted for the following year. I need to take a gap year, which is a euphemism for killing 365 consecutive days. But how?

  I stumble back to my third-trumpet seat. Dr. Raymond Wheeler taps his baton and scowls at me to pay attention. Trumpet touches lips. We play “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4” and there is no doubt whatsoever that high school is ending.

  I strain, unsuccessfully, to hit my high E-flat and catch Dr. Wheeler wincing as if his firstborn child has just been hit by a truck. It’s no good. I can’t concentrate; my immediate future’s playing out alongside Edward Elgar’s overture. Measure thirty-two arrives, giving me a nine-bar rest. While resting, I tear through coming-year options. After I rule out 1) waiting tables, 2) chopping wood, 3) chopping tables, an idea hits me: a year at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, where I’d also applied. I’ve been going to St. Andrews since I was a little kid, to play golf with my family and to visit my mother’s uncle Ken Hayward, who lives four hundred yards from the Old Course’s first tee.

  As soon as I get home from graduation, I call the University of St. Andrews. I discover that they have a special freshman-year-abroad program. I call Harvard to see if I can do it. Harvard says it’s okay, if I don’t matriculate for transfer credit.
I also discover that the University of St. Andrews has a 70/30 girl-to-boy ratio. I’m also a 1.8-handicap golf junkie. This is all sounding good.

  • • •

  “First place goes to Duncan Montgomery!”

  Everyone around me applauds. Several bang on tables. Others scream, “Montayyyyyyy!” at inappropriate volumes. Duncan Montgomery, a third-year student from Edinburgh, waves cheerfully from his seat.

  It’s a warm Wednesday night in mid-May, and I’m near the end of my gap year in St. Andrews, Scotland. I’m at the weekly meeting for the University of St. Andrews golf team. True to British university form, the team is entirely student run (no adults, no coaches) and meets once a week, at a pub called the Gin House. It also contains, this year, twenty-five students with handicaps of 2 or better. Results are being announced now from the weekly club medal on the Old Course, from which team standings are determined. The winning student this week (“Montayyyyyy!”), currently necking a pint of Tennent’s lager, has casually shot a 5-under 67. Last weekend, facing a match against Clark University (visiting from the States), the club captain, a party animal from Northern England, showed up on the first tee at nine A.M., sleepless, disheveled, and still in a tuxedo from the night before. He rubbed his eyes, hit his opening drive 280 down the middle, and won his match 6 and 5.

  I’m sitting at the crowded team table in the back of the Gin House, beside Michael Choong, a posh Chinese-English third-year student from Wimbledon, and Richard Hooper, a six-foot-three Welsh fourth-year student who last week broke his putter in anger against a tree on the third hole of a match against the University of Stirling and had to subsequently putt with his 4-iron (he shot 68). I lean back in my chair, think about my own relatively puny score of 75, and roll up my sleeves for the ensuing drinking games. It’s going to be a messy night.

  * * *

  Thus far, my gap year in St. Andrews has been unthinkably wonderful. With my £105 student links ticket, I’ve been allowed unlimited play on St. Andrews’s six golf courses. I play a round virtually every day on the Old Course and have dinner at least once a week with my dapper, plaid-tie-wearing uncle Ken. My classes are superb. I read English with Robert Crawford, the good great poet, who has us imitating Wordsworth and Keats. I also study modern history and international relations, taught by brilliantly eccentric old Scottish guys with big ears and impenetrable brogues. I have my first serious girlfriend. I try haggis. I meet kids from all over the world, and together we discover St. Andrews’s thirty-one pubs (the highest per capita pub population in the UK).

  Maybe because of its age (nearly six hundred years old), or maybe just because it’s in Scotland, ancient arcane traditions abound at the University of St. Andrews. And I’ve tried to take part in them all. There’s the bimonthly Pier Walk, for which hundreds of students don ceremonial red academic robes and walk down the harbor pier in pitch-darkness, every third student holding a candle for (totally inadequate) illumination. There’s the May Dip, held on May 1, when all seven thousand students stay up through the night attending various parties, then charge into the North Sea at five A.M., totally naked (while a choir sings hymns and bagpipers play from the rocks). And there’s Raisin Weekend, an Animal House–esque weekend in November “supervised” by every first-year student’s “academic parents” (all third- or fourth-year students), involving obscene levels of drinking and culminating in a nine A.M. sixteen-hundred-person shaving foam fight in St. Salvator’s Quad. There’s also the student charity fashion shows, at which ultracool European students dressed to the nines sit at tables stocked with champagne. And the notorious May Ball, held in a gigantic converted farmhouse outside St. Andrews. Here, the VIP “Gold Ticket” gets you a limo ride . . . to the helicopter, which sweeps you along the coast and touches down on the farm, where bumper cars, a Ferris wheel, and chocolate fountains await.

  There’s another quirk to the University of St. Andrews. For the last three years, Prince William has been a student here—bringing fame, fortune, and gloriously high numbers of girl applicants to the university. Protecting its prized possession, the university has a special agreement with the royal family: Any student attempting to sell photographs of William to the British tabloids will find him or herself promptly expelled from school. Uncle Ken lives across the street from William’s flat, exchanges pleasantries with him daily, doesn’t ask for autographs or photo ops.

  But my most important discovery—by far—is that everyone at the University of St. Andrews seems to play golf. Including very cute girls. For the first time in my life, my golf playing is an asset, as cool (perhaps) as being a quarterback on an American college football team. In St. Andrews, golf runs alongside life. This is not a small deal.

  By this point in May, it has become clear to me: I do not want this gap year to end. As glasses clink and club captain Benny Kelly announces upcoming matches, I ask kids at my table what students do for paid work during vacation. Amazingly, I learn that many of my golf team friends stay on in St. Andrews over the summer to caddie on the Old Course. I’m told that caddies earn fifty pounds a round or more, and can, on a good day, loop two rounds a day. The exchange rate for the dollar is terrible, so fifty pounds translates to nearly $100—a hell of a lot more than the $35 a round I’d been earning caddying at Bass Rocks Golf Club in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where my family lives during the summer months. Over pints of Belhaven Best, my friends also tell me hilarious stories of tourist golfers and famously gruff old Old Course caddies. It all sounds good.

  I fill out the forms, buy official Old Course caddie rain gear, sign up for the official Old Course caddie training program, change the date of my flight home to America, and find cheap student digs for the summer.

  I’m good to go—which is to say, I’m ready to stay.

  ONE

  “Horovitz, you’re with Kenny.”

  Rick Mackenzie thrusts a pin sheet into my outstretched hand. Twenty old Scottish caddies mill about the window of the caddie shack. It seems like a slow day. I nod to Rick, thank him, offer up a sunny smile. I want to make a good first impression, to charm him, and the smile usually works with most people.

  Rick does not return my smile. “Get going,” he barks instead.

  I get going.

  I’m about to do a “shadow round”—the final stage of my official Old Course caddie training program before I can begin earning money. I’ll be following a professional caddie around the Old Course, observing how he operates. Secretly, I’m pretty sure I don’t need this shadow training. I’ve played the Old Course close to 150 times this year. I had the best round of my life (2 under, the only time I’ve ever broken par) on these very eighteen holes back in December. I’ve also caddied summers at Bass Rocks Golf Club since I was twelve. The way I see it, I’m already qualified. Still, a shadow round is what Rick’s requiring, and I tell myself it’ll be good to hang with one of the professional caddies, to pick up some tricks. In fact, going in, I have a romanticized view of this relationship; I see us as Caddie and Shadow, teacher and student, father and son even.

  I find Kenny by the first tee. He is a Scot with an accent so thick, even other Scottish caddies have difficulty understanding him. He has three friendly American women in his group, all, like me, from New York City, and I happily chat with them while we await our tee time. My caddie mentor, observing this friendly chat, is all smiles, and I feel my caddie career is off to a great start. As we walk onto the first tee, Kenny yanks me aside, motions to his mouth, and whispers fiercely, “Yuh see what ahm pointin’ to, Jimmah? Shut it!”

  The high point of this shadow round, beyond my raking traps and searching cacti-sharp gorse bushes for lost balls, comes on the fifteenth hole, when I’m told (not asked . . . told) to run to the Eden Clubhouse to grab a bottle of water. Upon my breathless return, the professional caddie takes the bottle, turns to his player (who has, of course, witnessed none of my excursion), and charmingly announces, “Here, Judy. I got you some water.” This is not the opening day of my
dreams.

  • • •

  By nine P.M. I’m back in my rented St. Andrews flat, and the memory of the day’s caddie humiliation is mercifully fading in the recesses of my mind. From my closet, I pull out a crimson-colored packet that’s arrived in St. Andrews. There’s a boldfaced message on the front cover: Welcome (in 3 months!) to the Harvard Class of 2008.

  I open up the packet, revealing twelve pages of advance orientation info. Move-in dates, freshman-year academic requirements, a picture of a dorky kid smiling in pastel green shorts. I really don’t need to look at this packet yet—there are still months before freshman registration—but tonight, I pore over everything. I’ll be living in Weld Hall, the welcome sheet says. That sounds nice. It looks like it’s in the middle of Harvard Yard. There’s also a laundry room in Weld. Sweet.

  I count the days till I start. Eighty-three. A part of me wishes it were less. I notice my pin sheet from today lying on the bed and tuck it away in my drawer. I realize I’m actually scared to go back to the shack tomorrow.