Walking with Jack by Don J. Snyder Page B

Gilchrist,” he said. “I’ll ring him just now on my mobile if you want.”
    Ten minutes later I was running to the bus stop to catch the 95, which dropped me in the center of the village of Kingsbarns. From there I walked about half a mile, along the main road for six hundred yards, then down the long curving entrance road through a farmer’s fields. I was so nervous that I kept counting my paces just under my breath. When I walked through the stone pillars, past the practice range, and got my first glimpse of the place, it stopped me in my tracks. The golf course lay along the sea in a kind of splendor most golfers will never see in their lifetimes. Out in front of me for as far as I could see were pale green fairways sweeping through wild, honey-colored dunes with the kinds of dramatic elevations that are uncommon in links courses anywhere in the world. My first glimpse of the place was breathtaking. Like something from a dream. If caddying at theOld Course was going to be like working every day in a museum, Kingsbarns was an art gallery.
    I met Davy Gilchrist in the small stone cottage just behind the parking lot that served as the caddie shed. When he shook my hand, he narrowed his intense blue eyes as if he were trying to see inside me. I told him in one breath why I had come to Scotland and what had happened to me at the Old Course. He told me about his own kids and his grandkids, who all lived within fifty yards of his house. “They’re fantastic! They rob me blind,” he said with a wide grin. He told me that Kingsbarns trained the best caddies in all of Scotland. Then he outlined the terms of employment. He had around seventy caddies, and I would be starting at the bottom of the list, meaning I wouldn’t go out each day until all of them had. But he gave me his word that he would get me as much work as he could, and because I was living in Elie and was familiar with the course there, he would send me there as well when there were requests. Until I learned my way around, I would be a “shadow” walking beside one of the real caddies and paying that caddie £2 per round for the privilege of learning all that I could from him. The season opened in three days and would run for six months, and I was expected to be there every day.
    That was good enough for me. We shook hands again, and he said, “I can always use a hardworking caddie.”
    I walked back into the village in the rain and was soaked to my skin by the time I got under the roof of the bus stop. I didn’t care. I couldn’t have been happier if I had just been elected the mayor of Kingsbarns. Inside the little hut was a guy sitting on the bench with boots caked in mud. A middle-aged man, he was hunched over, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the rain with a baleful expression. “Are you a farmer?” I asked. He gave me a sideways glance, then resumed glaring at the weather without answering my question. “Ifeel sorry for the farmers in this country, working outside in this weather,” I said a little too cheerfully. He got a pained look on his face as if my tone of voice had offended him in some way.
    Then without looking back at me, he muttered, “Try working as a bleedin’ caddie.”

      MARCH 31, 2008     
    Opening day is tomorrow. In four hours I will be caddying my first loop at Kingsbarns for the management of the course. Davy told me that I would be carrying the bag of David Scott, the director of golf operations. I won’t be paid, but I will be given my tea (lunch, I suppose) in the clubhouse after the round. Fair enough. I’m taking one of Jack’s University of Toledo golf balls to present to Mr. Scott on the 1st tee. And I’ve been awake since 4:00 a.m. studying my yardage book. I walked the course once, taking notes, and I’ve written those notes into the book. But when I close my eyes and try to picture the holes, it is all just a blur to me. A pale green field of mounds and valleys rolling beside the blue sea.