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He
would drive a ball into a large patch of very deep rough, some 150
yards away and you had to find it. If you did and had satisfied him
on the other points, you were registered as a first class caddie.
Your pay then went up by 25% to 1s 3d (6.25p) and he received a
booking fee of tuppence. Everything was done in a very orderly
fashion and you were required to register as soon as you arrived at
the club, then go to the caddies hut at the back of the pro’s shop.
The rules were simple - registered caddies were employed first,
casuals after that and you behaved yourself or you were likely to be
moved to the bottom of the list. If you then failed to get a job
there would be some explaining to do when you got home. Frank Larke was the professional and our Lord and Master while we
were at the club. Although not a big man, he was very forbidding
with a swarthy complexion and a fierce black moustache. He was one
of the old school - a strict disciplinarian who demanded instant
obedience and acceptable behaviour, which he usually got due to his
fearsome appearance. Any caddie who was reckless enough to step out
of line would receive a severe punishment. One thing that I
particularly remember was his smoking habit. He was an inveterate
pipe smoker and always smoked Three Nuns tobacco. This came in coils
about ¼ inch in size and seemed to take half a box of matches to get
going, but what really amazed me was that he rolled his own
cigarettes - and used the same tobacco! It was a miracle that he
ever got it to light. He was still doing it when I called to see him
many years later, when he was just about to retire from the club. He
could have bought a packet of 10 ‘Pure Virginia’ cigarettes made by
Three Nuns for 6d, but ‘old habits die hard’. Registered caddies were always very partisan when inter-club matches were played. - quite a feature of club activities in those days. The home team could always count on enthusiastic support from us and there were some pretty long faces in the caddie’s hut if the team lost. Whether or not they were aware of it we never knew. Inevitably, as I suspect is the case with most groups of youngsters, we formed our own opinions about certain players. They might be the subject of criticism, approval or a kind of hero worship. Nicknames were given to some players. I can recall one we always referred to as “Tuppenny Rice”, because he always tipped his caddie two pence. No one was exactly ‘over the moon’ if they got his bag. There was one family of single figure handicap golfers who always caused great excitement among the caddies when they turned up to play – ‘The Humphreys’. We always referred to them by their initials (not in their hearing of course). The father J.P., known to us as ‘the Judge’, who had won the Midland Championship in 1910, had the highest handicap at four. The eldest son, R. P., reached the semi-final of the Amateur Championship in 1914 and was to win the Midland Championship in 1925 and 1926. He always excited us most because he was a big hitter and, if we hadn’t got a bag at the time they were playing, he could be sure of an enthusiastic send off from the first tee, where we would assemble to see if he would drive over the road. He was about the only player at that time who did it most times he played and there was great disappointment (and some cryptic remarks) if he failed to make it. Today’s professionals would probably do it with a five or six iron, but it was a mighty hit with the clubs and balls we used. The younger brother G. N. P., Captain of Cambridge University in 1920, was always known to us as the steady one, not nearly as long as R. P. but a good deal more accurate and he often came out on top. His name appeared under ‘Record Ties’ in the Golfer’s Handbook after he halved the first eight holes in the 6th round of the1923 Amateur Championship at Deal with the American D. Grant. In the 1925 English Amateur at Royal Liverpool he holed in one at the 13th (Rushes). The car park, adjacent to the pro’s shop, had a capacity of about half a dozen vehicles. It was seldom full as most of the players arrived by train, the station being no more than a drive and a pitch from the club. The Midland and Great Western lines crossed the course and were formidable hazards on some holes. At the 11th you had to drive over the Midland lines to a green just in front of the GWR station and, at the next two holes, you played between the two sets of lines. At the short 13th, where my eldest brother George had one of his eight holes-in-one, they were only 25/30 yards apart and at no point was there more than 50/60 yards between them. There were rushes and ferns in great abundance and a considerable variety of ditches and streams had to be negotiated. The course, being on common land, was used by the locals for grazing and I can never remember the fairways being mown. A wonderful array of animals and poultry kept the grass short and I often wonder what today’s stars would have made of those ‘close to nature’ conditions. NEXT |
