his caddying bridges by putting the flagstick to the eighth hole in my golf bag by mistake, and Bob Boffinger, my regular caddy in Nottinghamshire junior and youth events. The problem with Bob was that I couldn’t help viewing his habit of running off, mid-hole, to offer assistance to fellow Cripsley juniors as an act of gross infidelity. I had, after all, been on Bob’s bag for fifty pence a round during my first few months at Cripsley, and now, with our roles reversed, I wondered if there wasn’t a little residual bitterness. Granted, Bob was fifty-eight. But I couldn’t help suspecting that he nurtured his own small but perfectly formed dream of marching up the final hole at St Andrews in the 1990 British Open to a standing ovation with faithful little Tom Cox on his bag. By running off up the parallel fairway to find out how Jamie was scoring when, at two over par with four holes to go in the first round of the Midland Youths Championship, I needed him to help me find my ball, perhaps he was paying me back. Whatever the case, I made sure it was the only kind of payment that was happening.
Not that I was going to tell Gary any of this.
I could see what my new friend was driving at, and it required some serious thought. I played golf in an aspirational middle-class suburb, the kind of place where couples in sandals hold hands in front of estate agent windows; I went to school, on the other hand, in an evolutionary cul-de-sac with closed-circuit TV surveillance on its main street: a place whose principal form of boredom-prevention was an annual event involving semi-paralytic, eighteen-stone men racing prams down hills, seeing who could drool the furthest, then passing out. If my brain was a mansion for my interests, then golf luxuriated in the opulent master bedroom, while school was stuffed away neglectfully in the servants’ quarters. The two passed one another on the stairs occasionally, but were on nodding rather than speaking terms. Sure, I gave my teachers and fellow pupils absolutely no doubt that they were in the presence of a legendary swinger-to-be and that they should be grateful I was magnanimous enough to attend the same classes as them. But when it came to actual interaction, I knew the two worlds should be kept roughly three solar systems apart. I had found this out, to my mortification, via an English oral assessment the previous term, during which, while dressed in a Lyle and Scott sweater, slacks and sun visor, I attempted to explain the intricacies of such golfing terminology as ‘stiff shaft’, ‘rimming out’, ‘sweet spot’ and ‘tradesmen’s entrance’ to thirty fourteen-year-olds who viewed double-entendres as a synonym for comic genius.
Gary, however, was not one of them. He was always sprucely dressed – one of the few kids who wore trousers, not jeans, on Non-uniform Day – probably didn’t find the word ‘wormburner’ the least bit amusing, and had the kind of haircut most of Cripsley’s most eminent lady members would want to take home and feed teacakes to. These things convinced me that Gary would be the ideal caddie. Well – these things, and the fact that he didn’t expect to get paid.
Still, as a golfer, it’s easy to forget just how bewildering the game’s viper’s nest of decorum can seem to a novice. Mindful of this, I made sure that Gary would make his début in the most innocuous of club events (the somewhat anonymous Monthly Medal), surrounded by the most tolerant supervisors (Jamie and me), during the quietest part of the day (late afternoon, when the majority of Cripsley’s committee members would already have filed their cards and be tucked up in the clubhouse with a plate of steaming teacakes). In such an atmosphere, Gary could make the standard tenderfoot lapses – a mistimed cough here, a misplaced putter there, a badly situated trolley here – without causing any serious chaos.
On competition days, I made a point of arriving at the course ninety
Not that I was going to tell Gary any of this.
I could see what my new friend was driving at, and it required some serious thought. I played golf in an aspirational middle-class suburb, the kind of place where couples in sandals hold hands in front of estate agent windows; I went to school, on the other hand, in an evolutionary cul-de-sac with closed-circuit TV surveillance on its main street: a place whose principal form of boredom-prevention was an annual event involving semi-paralytic, eighteen-stone men racing prams down hills, seeing who could drool the furthest, then passing out. If my brain was a mansion for my interests, then golf luxuriated in the opulent master bedroom, while school was stuffed away neglectfully in the servants’ quarters. The two passed one another on the stairs occasionally, but were on nodding rather than speaking terms. Sure, I gave my teachers and fellow pupils absolutely no doubt that they were in the presence of a legendary swinger-to-be and that they should be grateful I was magnanimous enough to attend the same classes as them. But when it came to actual interaction, I knew the two worlds should be kept roughly three solar systems apart. I had found this out, to my mortification, via an English oral assessment the previous term, during which, while dressed in a Lyle and Scott sweater, slacks and sun visor, I attempted to explain the intricacies of such golfing terminology as ‘stiff shaft’, ‘rimming out’, ‘sweet spot’ and ‘tradesmen’s entrance’ to thirty fourteen-year-olds who viewed double-entendres as a synonym for comic genius.
Gary, however, was not one of them. He was always sprucely dressed – one of the few kids who wore trousers, not jeans, on Non-uniform Day – probably didn’t find the word ‘wormburner’ the least bit amusing, and had the kind of haircut most of Cripsley’s most eminent lady members would want to take home and feed teacakes to. These things convinced me that Gary would be the ideal caddie. Well – these things, and the fact that he didn’t expect to get paid.
Still, as a golfer, it’s easy to forget just how bewildering the game’s viper’s nest of decorum can seem to a novice. Mindful of this, I made sure that Gary would make his début in the most innocuous of club events (the somewhat anonymous Monthly Medal), surrounded by the most tolerant supervisors (Jamie and me), during the quietest part of the day (late afternoon, when the majority of Cripsley’s committee members would already have filed their cards and be tucked up in the clubhouse with a plate of steaming teacakes). In such an atmosphere, Gary could make the standard tenderfoot lapses – a mistimed cough here, a misplaced putter there, a badly situated trolley here – without causing any serious chaos.
On competition days, I made a point of arriving at the course ninety
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