I like it when your group are just out to have a lot of fun. Our guys the other day from Lower Boston certainly filled that category. They were playing the excellent Texas Scramble format whereby the best ball is always chosen from all the four balls hit. It is a great way to play the difficult Castle Course. However on the third tee Wayne declared that they were going to play Wolf! Seemingly the first guy that tees off is the Wolf and if he hits a good shot he has to make a loud wolf call, and as such challenges anyone to beat his shot.
The problem is that Wayne hit a shocker and we were denied the experience of his wolf call. Anyway after that the Wolf game got a bit complicated and I’m not sure anyone in the group really understood it. Something about nominating another person to be the wolf? However three more shocking shots were played and by all accounts no wolf call was warranted.
So we get on the 11th green and the guys declare that the caddies must putt out. Which we did and mine just lipped out from thirty feet. On to the next tee we are then asked to hit the drives! Caddie Mulligan’s was all round by all accounts. It was all done in great spirit and we all hit crackers down the middle of the fairway. And in these tense few minutes, for I hadn’t hit a ball for ages, we did the reputation of St Andrews caddies’ golfing abilities no harm at all.

At The Castle we have a system whereby we call a dedicated Caddie Line in the evening whereby we find out our tee times for the next day. If you are not mentioned then the idea is that you pitch up at 9 am and hang around for a job to come in.
This was the case yesterday and I sat in the Caddie Shack. Matt came in for a wee chat and said with a wry grin ‘still writing your blog?’ And I had to acknowledge in the affirmative. Anyway we had a little laugh at how I had described him as being a bit gruff on our first meeting.Kevin, our manager, then popped his head round the door looking a bit flustered and declared that he needed 4 caddies for 11am. So I am on the tee and we have four blokes from somewhere in middle England and were into tower cranes and were obviously out for a bit of a laugh. I got to take Keith’s bag which was a bit of a result as I’m crap at remembering names.
Anyway Keith seemed to be the target of a lot of jibing. He was wearing a winter woolly hat and was being teased rotten for it. He retorted that ‘you had to look the part’ at which point the massively blunt Mancunian crane operations manager immediately declared that ‘you look a tit’.
And I have to say his comic timing was superb.

I have only had a few rounds this week. One notable group was The Listener’s Tour from the US. A group of genial but mildly eccentric Americans and a lovely Dutch guy called Frank.They are all followers of a rave golf radio show in the States which seemingly has about 4 million followers and presented by some chap called Mark.
Anyway I got the bag of larger than life Alvin who was a big oil lawyer from Oklahoma and who called it straight. I indicated on the first green that I think its on the left lip at which point he looked me straight in the eyes and said ‘I don’t want you to think’. I smiled slightly nervously but understandingly and we had a quick chuckle and got on well after that. He was playing with Jason, a small Woody Allen type figure who wore an old style golf bonnet, had a wooden golf stand which doubled as a walking stick and had some hickory shafted clubs in his pencil bag. On the 11th into a fierce wind he pulled one out and hit this remarkable shot. It flew straight through the strong wind like a cannon ball, or at least how I imagine a cannon ball would fly, and landed pin high.I asked him what he hit and he casually replied ‘a jigger’ as if I should have known that was the obvious club to have hit. He then explained that it’s the perfect club for wind as it has no grooves and so gives the ball no spin and therefore is unaffected by the wind.
And he was right.

So I’m back in St Andrews and straight into caddying again up at The Castle Course. So the blog recommences for all my avid and discerning readers of which there are some I hope. I mean I hope there are some readers!
So onwards!
I thought I might try and add a bit extra this year and fulfil my ambition to be the AA Gill of the St Andrews culinary scene. I continuously get asked to recommend places in town and it’s a reasonably hard call at the moment as I haven’t eaten out enough here yet. So now I have a good excuse. I did a trip advisor review for The One Under Gastro Pub last week and had fun venting my frustration and dismay at their audacity to call it a gastro pub. I intimated that it should maybe be called the ‘One Over’. However it had the potential to be a double bogey in all honesty.
Anyway it’s fun back caddying and seeing all the old faces. Cologne Tom sporting an intensely late autumnal auburn tinge to his film star locks and being very much his old unique self and Matt our Caddiemaster who is still running the show. In fact he looked vaguely pleased to see me which was a bit of a bonus. And remarkably I still have a job!