Caddie's Role: Another trip loomed and I needed to focus on the "joys" of heading off to another time zone, on to another continent and ultimately another golf course.
It is easy to slip into the mundane ways of international travel and competition at yet another event. I suppose it is the same for most people who on the surface lead exotic lifestyles; the reality can frequently be quite repetitive.
This is where some comparisons must be made, the sacrifices of a nomadic existence against a sedentary one. The thought of the imminent trip, the airport, another mattress and the idiosyncrasies of another hotel room. "Sorry sir, the air-conditioning is centrally controlled" is the answer from reception as you wake up in the middle of the night with icicles forming on your temples in a jet-lagged stupor.
"The shower in that room has always leaked" has often been given as the answer to why I have to run around the shower in a less established hotel to get wet. "The toilet needs to be jiggled to get it to stop flushing" is another regular one. You become hyper-sensitive to all these originally endearing features of travel which become irritating snags as the years roll on. Do I have to go? I want to stay at home.
I used to get excited about travel. There is not a trip goes by when I don't mutter something about Osama bin Laden as I arrive at an America airport waiting to get herded through security. Here the authorities will disarm you by calling you Sir and then proceed to abuse you like you were the source of all that is evil in this modern era of international travel. The scrutiny of shoes, belts, your soggy lip balm usually follows.
As I was lingering in Heathrow waiting for my transatlantic trip to begin after a two-week golf break (for me no golf) and travel-free bliss at home, I started to feel sorry for myself. To cheer myself up I started to think about what I have to be grateful for as a global unskilled labourer.
For those of you who travel frequently and more regularly than you clean out your travel bag, you are aware what the spring clean to the old satchel can reveal. As I trawled through the depths of my travel bag I dug out, amongst other mysterious tattered papers, some booklets I had snatched and carefully stowed several months previously from the caddie wagon in the States.
Leafing through some of these glossy documents, it struck me clearly just how much I had to be grateful for as a modern looper; finally some sort of status on the tour time-sheet, so to speak. I had started caddying in the days of the overnight bus trip and a hitched lift to that week's hosting country club which would get me there by Tuesday afternoon at the latest, I had hoped. The most important objective of the week was to have a good time and spend as little time as possible at the golf course. If you broke even by Sunday night it was considered a successful trip.
Oh how times have changed. Not only do I get to use the fast-track at airports, sometimes I don't even have to endure the rigours of security. Us cads have got a bit too cosy with the frequent lifts on private aircraft with our bosses. Gone are the days of the overnight on the Eurobus with your head rattling against a window dripping with condensation.
When I finally got around to perusing these documents that had padded my bag for the past few months I was quickly reminded of the monumental progress us international porters have made in the year 2006. We are worth printing a caddies' handbook for at their impending tournaments.
For this week's event in New Orleans there is a matt-finish book to provide us with an overview of the services and information that may be helpful to us during the Zurich Classic. There is still a distinction between the masters and their servants, the players' guide gleams with a gloss finish. It is a nice touch nonetheless.
Aware of the lure for most of us, the second page displayed the breakdown of the prize fund. The organisers have done their research. They inform us that our bibs will be laundered twice out of four wears (hope it is not too sweaty, how fussy of me, the late 80s a faded memory).
We will get a couple of extra passes for our guests and they will cash cheques for us at the venue. The highlight of the social calendar is to be $5,000 Blackjack Tournament exclusive to the bagmen at the local casino.
Next week in Charlotte, North Carolina, Wachovia have outdone Zurich in the caddie shack with their gloss-finished handbook. The book reflects the contents.
A caddie dinner is hosted on the Tuesday night. The bibs will be laundered every day. On Wednesday we have an open invitation to the local theme park.
Free golf is available to us at a nearby resort all week long. The piece de resistance is the valet parking for us right outside the clubhouse. Surely this means we have finally arrived.
As if that isn't the red carpet treatment, the 84 Lumber people are running a pro-am with a difference on the Monday after the US Open. The pros in this event are us, the caddies. They are paying the participating cads to play with what I can only imagine are misdirected amateurs.
Oh what a difference a couple of decades makes in the caddie shack. We have moved from the outhouse to the penthouse. It makes all those preliminary years of isolation in the country club car park seem as distant as the French Revolution.
