We had our annual Caddie Tournament at the Castle on Friday, played on a fine and clear day. Lovely John Cunningham had a hole in one. I managed to score 34 points and take the first prize money, albeit young Johnny came in with 37 points, but hadn’t brought cash along for the sweepstake entry fee.
So I’m feeling a bit like Justin Rose in having had back-to-back tournament wins, as he has just scooped the Turkish Open after landing the WGC-HSBC Champions the previous week. Except Justin is £1.4 million to the better, while I’m thirty seven pounds and fifty five pence. But money is not everything.
Now, that’s it for caddying this season and there have been many fond farewells as we go our separate ways over the winter. I shall be continuing to blog nevertheless.
We had a wee meal and drink after the caddies match and a huge night. Reputedly, Mr Craig Robertson walked the twenty miles back to Leven in the early hours of Saturday morning. But this has yet to be verified by a sober Mr Robertson. If so it’s a superb feat. Walking half the way to Edinburgh on the back of a round at the Castle, a Hunter’s chicken and chips from the Rule and eighteen pints of lager is not to be sniffed at. In fact it is almost heroic.
I had a couple of rounds during the week and met lovely Richard and Paula from Ontario. Sometimes, I try a long shot ice breaker on first meeting people and ventured the name of the only Canadian with whom I am acquainted, ‘do you know Jim Kinnaird?’ to which Paula, gobsmacked, replied ‘oh yes Jim!’ Now, that’s quite something. Turns out Richard is in finance and knows Jim through a conference he holds in Bermuda!
Small world.
This kind of line doesn’t seem to work so well with Asians, I have found though. Asking a chap from Tokyo if he knows Hesa Hirose is usually met with a look of utter disbelief and an immediate supposition of insanity. May I say that this is sometimes a hard situation to retrieve in four and a half hours on a golf course.
However, I did have a similar situation in a bar, one late night in Edinburgh years ago, when talking to some chap from Chicago. I was waxing lyrical about an old flame, the belle of Kirkcaldy, Dorothy Whitelaw. Yes there are belles of Kirkcaldy! Anyway, it turned out that this American bloke had met her in a bar in Chicago when she was on her world tour!
Very small world.
Yesterday was the last round of the season for good. I caddied for Johnny Nolan, a big fun guy from Oregon who is a successful, self made restaurateur and pretty good golfer. So we had little in common, aside from girth.
Of course I should have tried the line ‘do you know Jim Kinnaird?’, but I just couldn’t chance on a connection between Calgary and Oregon. Different countries you see. However, it turned out they were staying in Jim’s house which overlooks the 18th green of the Old!
Now I should have asked if he knew Dorothy.
Im.about to play golf in New South Wales in the morning with a guy who asked me if it was myself mentioned in paragraph 4. Thats the first time I’d read that Keith. Memories eh? 5 years ago and never knew i was mentioned on this infamous blog. But i can beat the small world stories. Haha
Indeed Craig it is the veritable Mr Robertson, thay characterful character from down the coast. You sir.
As I indeed said in that post ‘its a small world’
New South Wales !
Enjoy your game.