By Brett Cyrgalis
It had been, oh, 20 years or so since I donned the caddie bib and put someone else’s bag over my shoulder. A lot has changed since then – most notably, the price of labor – but I quickly learned that one thing has not. When your player makes a mistake, you feel the guilt.
I had forgotten that when I offered to dust off my looping skills for my friend and decorated amateur Mike Auerbach in the New York State Open in July. It is a big event, club pros playing for real money. And it was being played at the Glen Oaks Club, not far from my house on Long Island and a wonderful one-year alternative to its traditional home at Bethpage Black (which was rather busy getting ready for some other tournament to be held in September).
We had heard rumors of how tough the course was playing, most likely being circulated by superintendent Craig Currier. I can confirm the rough was up, often twisted in long curlicues of deep blue-green. The fairways were perfect, fast and firm and pushing balls into that rough. And the greens, as is always the case at Glen Oaks, were pure as a summer lightning strike. Oh, and it was a 7,400-yard par 70. Ho hum.
The way I saw it, it was hold-on-for-dear-life golf. I’m in awe of Christian Cavaliere and Peter Ballo for both breaking par over three rounds (and I have absolutely no idea how Lucas Spahl shot 66 on the final day to finish third). Big kudos to Christian – an amateur still! – for pulling it out in a playoff. His two up-and-downs from behind the 18th green, one in regulation and one in the playoff, would’ve made Seve blush.
But back to my guilt. My guy Mike is a great player in his own right, a little bullet-cut with the driver – which you might have read about previously in this space – crisp irons and putter that can heat up. So it feels strange to say that his first-round 80 really wasn’t that bad. Sometimes you hit five decent shots on a par 4. What can you do?
Come the second day, and we’re grinding to make the cut. (Notice how easy it is to slip into caddie-speak, using the first-person plural, “we,” like I did anything except schlep the tools.) Turns out, if we had shot even on the back, we would’ve made it on the number. So we get to No. 11, regularly the second hole on the Blue Nine. It’s an interesting hole. There is a reason when the PGA Tour was here in 2017 that they built a front tee to make it a drivable par 4. Because from 460 yards, down the hill, double-dogleg, around two ponds, it is a difficult puzzle to solve. First day, we banged 3-wood through into the long rough, which left us 124 yards over a pond to a front pin. Making a bogey from the back bunker wasn’t so bad.
I didn’t want Mike to do that again, so I offered a recommendation – slam driver left into what was a relatively wide part of the fairway. It was around a 260-yard carry on that line, which shouldn’t have been a problem from the elevated tee. Worst comes to worst, fan one right and be in that same spot through the fairway. Then Mike did the unthinkable and pulled one, extending the carry too much. Plunk, water. Just in case I hadn’t done enough, we dropped on the near side of the water where it crossed, a downhill lie in some light rough, 230 yards away. I convinced Mike to try to rip a 3-iron up around the green, aiming at the left greenside bunker. Turns out the opening was as wide as the HOV lane, one bad bounce to the right and another ball lost to a watery grave. He made a great 15-footer for a triple, and I immediately remembered what it feels like to be embarrassed on a golf course without ever swinging a club. It’s one thing if you make the mistakes, and I have plenty of scar tissue to remember my own. But it’s a different type of horrible to feel responsible for someone else’s misstep.
In my normal shoes as a player, the caddie only gets credit, not scorn. But from the other side I realized that self-flagellation remains an option. Maybe I didn’t care as much 20-odd years ago when I misread Mrs. Haversham’s putt for 8. But I was invested in Mike’s round, and now here I am with my own caddie scar tissue.
Boy, golf is the game that keeps on giving, huh?