Every year, the week before The Open, I get excited to hear all the rumors about where the pros are playing in Ireland. Many of them find those links to be the best preparation for the conditions they are about to face. And one course always pops up: Ballybunion in Co. Kerry. Tiger and Rory played a few years ago, and in today’s story, so did a father and son with one particularly memorable caddie. As always, these Paddy the Caddy stories are all fictional, and most of them true.
An Irish Caddie
There was this caddie. I forget his name. I have had thousands of caddies loop for me. Of them all, he was the best damn caddie I ever had carry my bag. It was a special round to start with. The sort of golf round where you know you’ll remember it for the rest of your life before you even put the tee in the ground on the first hole. You see, it was a rare round of golf I got to play with my father.
The scenery for this round was equally magical. We had the first tee time of the day at Ballybunion in County Kerry, Ireland. My father and I had played these ancestral links many years before. I don’t remember if we had caddies back then. All I recall from that round was walking in the horizontal rain, head down to brace the fury of wind. The best part of that round was the pint of Guinness in the modern looking clubhouse afterwards.
Since that day, Ballybunion had served as a placeholder in my mind. A place to which I needed to return. Whenever anyone asked if I could play one course in the world, it was never Augusta National, or Pine Valley. I’ve played The Old Course (and the entire Open Rota). I’ve played Royal Melbourne and Cypress Point. No, whenever I was asked to play anywhere, it was always Ballybunion with my father. Preferably the first tee time on a sunny day.
I had been manifesting that dream for years. But time was winning in the end. My father was getting older. He was playing less golf. A trip to Ireland to scale four-story dunes in search of a little white ball was becoming less and less realistic. I had to make it happen. So I did.
When I pulled our rental car into the parking lot at Ballybunion, I didn’t think of the logistical hoops I had to jump through to get us there. The booking the tee time nine months in advance, the B&B having no room for us despite having a confirmation email, and the ten near death experiences I had while driving on the wrong side of the road out of Shannon Airport were not on my mind as we walked up to the familiar looking building. No, I could think of only one thing. We made it.
It was early and our car was the only one there. The man behind the desk welcomed us. It wasn’t a warm welcome. Judging by the accent he was from the North. I tried not to let it phase me. I had dreamt of this day for the past twenty years. The man confirmed that we did indeed have the first round of the day. We would be assigned one caddie for the two of us.
We made our way to the putting green. Neither my father nor I said a word. We rolled putts in silence as if we were scared our voices would break the solemnity of the moment. Our caddie emerged as a mythic creature from the wooden shack adjacent to the first tee. He was an older man, roughly my father’s age it seemed. His calves were the size of tree trunks — physical proof of a lifetime spent scaling dunes looking for wayward drives. He had an untamed, long white beard that made him look equally wise and wild.
His large figure bounded toward us. He introduced himself, though for the life of me I can’t recall his name. For the sake of the story, and seeing that we were in Ireland, I will refer to him as Paddy. Paddy the Caddy. Paddy swung my bag around his shoulder and placed my father’s on a trolley with wheels. Back in my days as a looper you would get ridiculed for using a pull cart. But looking out at the massive seaside dunes I found it acceptable. Paddy didn’t look like the sort of man whose work ethic should be questioned.
Memories flooded back on the first tee. I saw the cemetery whose short walls backed up against the first fairway. I stood there marveling at the passage of time. A lot had happened over the twenty years since we had last been here. But looking out on the first hole, it was clear that not everything changes. Some things, like a son’s desire to golf with his father, remain the same.
We teed off. Two relatively straight drives that caressed the soft Irish sky. The sun was not yet over the dunes that lined the left fairway. We walked down the first hole. We passed the cemetery, each of us making a silent sign of the cross. The road that we drove in on was to our right. Passerby’s on their way to work walked by. They glanced over at the course to get a peak at the action. For the most part they walked on with the attitude of someone who forgets that they live next door to Ireland’s greatest golf course. Paddy, our caddie, waved at them all. In return, each of the townspeople said something to Paddy that I couldn’t make out. I followed closer to the street to hear better.
“Sorry to hear about ‘yer brother, Paddy,” one man said as he walked by.
On the next hole I had to ask. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I don’t know. But his response has stayed with me all my life.
“My brother, Bernie, passed away last night in London.”
We apologized profusely. We gave our condolences and stood for a minute in silence thinking of Paddy’s brother and our own mortality.
“That’s life, ye‘know. Nothing I can do about it, God rest his soul,” said Paddy.
We played the next hole without saying much. Paddy called out the yardages but that was the extent of conversation. It seemed like his brother was on everyone’s mind except his. Perhaps there was some wisdom in his response. Maybe one is able to have that opinion when they live freely everyday. When they leave no regrets and the timing is right for the passage into the next world. Paddy was the most carefree man I ever met. It was easy to assume he would make his own passage with equal grace, leaving nothing behind.
On the par 3 third I took out my rangefinder. I handed it to Paddy telling him he could use it for the rest of the round. Paddy looked at me like I was handing him an alien probe. To him that’s exactly what it was.
“What d’ye want me to do with that feckin’ toy,” he snared. “I know every inch of this here course. I have been a caddie for fifty years. My father was a caddie before me. My grandad was the head greens keeper. I don’t think I’ll be needing your rangefinder. This hole is 173 yards but today it’s playing all of 185.”
Out of curiosity, I pointed the rangefinder at the pin and shot the distance. 173. Not a yard off. I pulled my 175 club, forgetting his warning about the inward facing wind. As Paddy predicted, I came up ten yards short.
I walked to the green, marveling at Paddy from afar. There is nothing better than to bear witness to a master of one’s craft. And that’s what Paddy was. A master caddie. He read putts without bending down. He would point to a spot on the green as the line without having stepped behind the ball. Within four holes he had memorized each of our carry distances in yards and in meters. On the fifth hole my dad found the green in three shots. He had 20 feet down the hill for birdie. My dad was a better listener than me. He followed Paddy’s advice, hit his spot, and raised his putter as if he were Jack Nicklaus before the ball dropped in the hole for the first birdie of the day.
That’s the thing about birdies. No matter the age, they are something to celebrate. I stood watching my dad grinning like a little kid as he went to retrieve his ball from the hole. He bounded towards Paddy and the two of them embraced with a high five and several emphatic slaps on the chest. Watching that interaction made me wonder if Paddy had the best job in the world. I could only imagine the lifetime of celebrations: the birdie putts, the finding of a wayward drive in the thick dunes, the stinger drives kept low in the wind, or on a day like this, the joy of a father and a son reliving a dream from long ago.
When we made the turn Paddy asked if we wanted a smoke. My dad and I were confused at what he meant until Paddy produced a pack of cigarettes. All we could do was laugh and politely decline. I reminisced about my own days as a young caddie. I would have been fired before I pulled out a lighter if I was caught smoking on the course. But thousands of miles from home this felt perfectly normal. We may have been the golfers, but we made no mistake that we were merely visitors at Paddy’s home.
I was amazed at the vivacity that the old caddy had. There was no dune he wasn’t willing to climb, even if he knew a drive was a lost cause. If we were out of position he would scale a dune and yell down at us below where to aim. He called out the false fronts, the pins that we should avoid, when to wail on driver, and when to hold back with iron off the tee. It felt like Paddy was teaching us how to play the game of golf itself. The way the game was meant to be played.
When we got to the 17th hole, Paddy stopped walking. My dad and I looked back, but he told us to go on up to the elevated tee. He would wait below for us. He told us to take our time. I didn’t know what he meant.
The first time we played Ballybunion our heads were down to protect us from the weather. I remembered very little about the course. I certainly didn’t remember anything special about the 17th tee box. But this morning the skies were blue. The sun had risen and I could feel its Irish warmth on my face. From the top of the 17th hole we could see everything. The entire course laid out below us. The ocean right behind. The clubhouse and town in the near distance. It felt as if we were looking at God’s view of the Earth when he made it. And waiting for us at the top, a bench.
Dad sat down. It was the first time that day that I considered his age. Since we were reliving a childhood dream, I spent the last three hours thinking my dad was young again. But as he sat down on that bench with an emphatic sigh of relaxation I remembered that it was not his young and strong body walking this course. I sat down next to him.
Neither of us are the talking type. Rather, we are mind readers. Words were not necessary to say what we knew each of us were thinking. There was the baseline appreciation of the moment: the weather, the sun, and golf itself. Then there was the gratitude a son can only have for his father. As if my whole life, who I had become because of him, culminated into that singular moment. As if that bench was sitting there for centuries, waiting for a father and son to take a seat. It sure felt like that. We sat in silence on the bench looking over a dreamy Irish day with the sound of the ocean behind us. Then he spoke.
“I love you,” he said, barely audible in the wind.
“I love you too, dad,” I responded, letting the wind carry my words.
We stood and did a panoramic turn to take in our surroundings one last time. That’s when I noticed the engraving. Notched into the wooden bench were the letters “C - T - H.” I assumed they were the initials of whoever made the bench. Dad and I walked down to Paddy.
“Pretty special, isn’t it?” Paddy asked.
Dad and I could only nod in agreement. Again, words could not have expressed the moment the words that we said to each other on the bench. Paddy told us that many people sprinkle their ashes up there. He said that was where his brother, Bernie, would want his ashes. I thought it was as good a place as any.
“What did you think about the engraving? Any guesses on what it stands for?”
I told Paddy my initials theory. Wrong. Dad mentioned that it might be Roman numerals but Paddy and I both made fun of him for that. No, the letters and that spot high above the course meant something far more spiritual. It was as if the 17th tee box at Ballybunion was the intersection between God and golf. Up there, where one ended and the other began was difficult to tell.
Paddy told us what they meant. But it’s not my job to tell you. You might have to go yourself. Discover the magic of Ballybunion. Learn the words behind C - T - H. And do yourself a favor. Bring your dad or son along.
As if my whole life, who I had become because of him, culminated into that singular moment. As if that bench was sitting there for centuries, waiting for a father and son to take a seat.
Great story. You're the best.
Dad