The word caddie, it is said, derives from the French cadet, referring to a younger or junior person. But some authorities also claim that "caddie" has long functioned in Scottish vernacular as a synonym for scrounger. The contrasting meanings neatly reflect the ambiguous position that the caddie has occupied in the game of golf.
The average age of the caddie, to name only one aspect of the role, has never been easy to define. One of the most famous of the Scottish caddies was the grizzled and slightly stooped Willliam Gunn, known as Caddie Willie, who carried clubs for generations of golfers at St. Andrews. Golfers on courses in eighteenth-century London sometimes availed themselves of the services of caddies drawn from the ranks of aging pensioners at the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich. Yet young boys and adolescents also made early and increasingly frequent appearances in the game, carrying their sheaf of wooden clubs under the arm or over the shoulder, the customary stance for caddies in the days before golf bags were introduced.
While some golfers derided the caddie as an impertinent ne'er-do-well, prone to the temptations of gambling, hard drinking, and indolence, others felt that the caddie was a true apprentice of the game, studying the strokes and strategies of the experienced players at close range so that he might one day compete with them on a shared level of mastery. The more benevolent view of caddies received its strongest boost in 1913, when Francis Oimet, a virtually unknown American amateur who had learned the game as a caddie, stunned the golfing community by defeating two celebrated British professionals, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, in a U.S. Open tournament at The Country Club, in Brookline, Massachusetts.
As golf clubs became more highly specialized tools, the number of clubs in the golfer's bag grew until some caddies were carrying as many as thirty. The U.S. Golf Association acted in 1938 to limit the number of clubs per player to fourteen, but the effect of this gesture was short-lived. Golf carts entered the game in the 1940s, offering club managers increased profits and golfers the luxury of riding instead of walking the course. Caddies, who had sometimes numbered 2,000 a season at a large club such as Olympia Fields outside Chicago, found the demand for their services sharply reduced. While caddies still worked the professional circuit with great success and occasional fame and were welcomed at private clubs, carrying a golf bag no longer offered large numbers of young men the opportunities it once seemed to promise.
ITEMS EXHIBITED
Darwin, Bernard. British Golf. Britain in Pictures. London: Collins, 1946.
Fulford, Harry. Golf's Little Ironies. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., 1919.
Hargreaves, Ernest and Jim Gregson. Caddie in the Golden Age: My Years with Walter Hagen and Henry Cotton. London; New York; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Partridge Press, 1993.
Hutchinson, Horatio Gordon. 'Bert Edward, The Golf Caddie. London: John Murray, 1903. First edition.
Golfing Art. Phil Pilley, ed. Topsfield, Mass.: Salem House Publishers, 1988.
Stirk, David I. Carry Your Bag Sir? A History of Golf's Caddies. London: H. F. & G. Witherby Ltd., 1989.
Webling, Walter Hastings. Locker Room Ballads. Illustrations by C. R. Snelgrove. Toronto: S. B. Gundy, 1925.
Wright, Ian, and Jeff Connor. Summers with Seve: My Life as Severiano Ballesteros' Caddie. London: Pelham Books, 1991.
Although Britain was the home of golf, British women initially received little hospitality from male golf clubs. Women golfers in the mid-nineteenth century had no choice but to play golf separately and form their own golfing organizations. In 1868, forty-seven women established the Westward Ho! and North Devon Ladies' Club, one of the first of the ladies' golf clubs. By 1900, 130 women's golf clubs had been created in Britain.
Several British amateur women players distinguished themselves in early tournaments. Lady Margaret Scott and May Hezlet each won the British amateur title three times, and Dorothy Campbell won the British and American amateur titles in the same year. Cecil Leitch won four Birtish amateur titles beginning in 1914, and her success was matched by Joyce Wethered, later Lady Heathcoat-Amory, who won four British amateur titles and retired at age 28, acclaimed by no less than Bobby Jones as the greatest golfer, man or woman, he had ever seen play.
While some private American golf clubs remained resolutely all-male, others welcomed women onto the golf course for regular play and tournaments. Particularly at the new American country clubs, with their emphasis on recreation and social life for the entire family, women played an important part in the organized development of golf and other athletic activities.
American women also made their mark in competition at the national and international level. "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias, golf medal winner in track and field at the 1932 Olympics, developed into a powerful golfer who won the U.S. Amateur championship, won thirty-one American tournaments, won the U.S. Women's Open five times, and was the first American woman to win the British Amateur championship. She is regarded by many to have been one of the greatest athletes of the century. Other U.S. Open winners included Patty Berg, Betty Jameson, and Louise Suggs, who was the U.S. national champion in 1947 and British champion in 1948.
American women golfers, like their British counterparts, played a significant role in defining the standards of competition and the character of play. In the books they authored or in which they were featured, these women led the way in helping to ensure that golf would remain a sport open to anyone, man or woman, with the interest and determination to meet its demands.
ITEMS EXHIBITED
Smith, Garden Grant, et al. The World of Golf. The Isthmian Library, no. 3. London: A. D. Innes & Co., Ltd., 1898. First edition.
Hezlet, May. Ladies' Golf. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1907.
Hutchinson, Horatio Gordon., ed. The New Book of Golf. London; New York; Bombay; Calcutta: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912. First edition.
Leitch, Cecil. Golf. Philadelphia; London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1922. First edition.
Leitch, Cecil. Golf Simplified. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1924. Ex libris George E. Sokolsky.
Collett, Glenna. Ladies in the Rough. Foreword by Bobby Jones. London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929.
Wilson, Enid, and Robert Allen Lewis. So That's What I Do! London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1935.
Stanley, Louis Thomas. How To Be A Better Woman Golfer. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, c1952.
Stanley, Louis Thomas. The Golfer's Bedside Book. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1955. Ex libris Ralph W. Miller Golf Library.
Suggs, Louise. Golf for Women. New York: Doubleday & Co., c1960.
Wilson, Enid. A Gallery of Women Golfers. Foreword by Bernard Darwin. London: Country Life Ltd., 1961.
Moran, Sharron. Golf Is A Woman's Game; Or, How to Be a Swinger on the Fairway. New York: Hawthorn Books Inc., c1971.
Mair, Lewine. The Dunlop Lady Golfer's Companion. Lavenham: Eastland Press, 1980.
Robertson, Belle, and Lewine Mair. The Woman Golfer: A Lifetime of Golfing Success. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1988.
Many devotees of golf argue that one is never too young to begin a lifetime acquaintance with the game. The earlier one begins to master the basics of the sport, these golfers maintain, the easier it will be to acquire the essential habits and patterns that make for continued success on the golf course.
One of the prerequisites for promoting an early start was golf equipment appropriately sized for the smaller stance and shorter reach of a boy or girl. By the 1920s, the Burke Golf Company of Newark, Ohio, along with other leading golf equipment manufacturers, was marketing sets of clubs especially designed to accommodate the needs and stature of younger golfers.
Books have also played a key role in initiating boys and girls into the joys and challenges of the game. T. Henry Cotton's Golf; Being a Short Treatise for the Use of Young People . . . (1931) and O. B. Keeler's The Boys' Life of Bobby Jones (1931) were two early attempts to interest young people in the game at its best. Books published by two writers with names familar in Chicago, champion golfer Chick Evans and journalist Robert A. Cromie, made equally imaginative efforts to draw young readers into an understanding of the game. Eddie Merrins and Michael McTeigue, in their Golf for the Young (1983) avoided condescending to younger players and explained the finer points of the game in terms adults would find familiar.
Behind every successful child golfer there is undoubtedly a dedicated parent. Dave Bauer, in recounting Golf Techniques of the Bauer Sisters . . . (1951) cannot refrain from expressing the pride he feels in coaching his two girls, Alice and Marlene, to outstanding performances on the golf course. "Petite, trim, 105-pound" Alice, he reports in the opening pages of his book, is "booming drives 225 yards down the fairway," while "pretty, girlish" Marlene is "shooting a 66 from men's tees over a championship course." For the golf enthusiast, there could be no better argument for an early start.
ITEMS EXHIBITED
Bauer, Dave. Golf Techniques of the Bauer Sisters. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., c1951. First edition.
Burke Golf Company. [Catalog]. Newark, Ohio: [Burke Golf Company], 1922.
Cotton, Henry. Golf: Being a Short Treatise for the Use of Young People Who Aspire to Proficiency in the Royal and Ancient Game. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., 1931.
Cromie, Robert. Golf for Boys and Girls. All-Star Sports Books. Chicago: Follett Publishing Co., 1965.
Evans, Charles. Golf for Boys and Girls. Chicago; New York: Windsor Press, 1954.
Ford, Doug. Start Golf Young. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., c1955. Inscribed by author.
Keeler, Oscar Bane. The Boys' Life of Bobby Jones. New York; London: Harper & Brothers, 1931. First edition.
Merrins, Eddie, and Michael McTeigue. Golf for the Young. New York: Atheneum, 1983.
READING THE GREENS:
BOOKS ON GOLF FROM THE ARTHUR W. SCHULTZ COLLECTION