Seriously? I thought the traditional caddie, not just a bag carrier, was one of the gems of the game to be preserved, or maybe "resurrected" would be a more appropriate word.
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This is certainly the view of Bandon Dunes, who state on their website: "we believe that the game of golf is best experienced by walking with a caddie - truly, golf as it was meant to be. "
This is utter nonsense - and I actually find it offensive. If people want to hire caddies, fine, but to hold the caddie up as epitome of the golf experience is to spit in the face of a century and a half of positive social change.
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The use of caddies are traditional only in the sense that it preserves the, thankfully, relatively short-lived period (in Scotland) when golf was almost entirely the preserve of the better off, and lower class men (or barefoot boys) acted essentially as servants on the golf course for the upper classes. Anyone who teed up a ball off sand (as a caddie would need to do for his master in the 19th century) knows what this relationship would have been like and books such as Tommy's Honour convey that reality rather well. There was simply a chasm in class terms, the worst features of which were "preserved" in other parts of the world where there were similarly great gulfs in income and opportunties. It also seems to me that the widespread use of adult men (many of them the early professionals) as caddies in the 19th century was more or less limited to St Andrews, and that most caddies would have been youngsters (many of them skipping school) who would not have been looked to for advice in any event. This in fact became a cause of real community concern, and clubs in St Andrews, Montrose and elsewhere were forced to set up night schools and other arrangements where the caddies could at least appear to get some semblance of an education.
This was not golf's finest hour.
I know many can cite examples where caddie programs have greatly benefitted the caddies themselves, and I am sure the caddies at Bandon (of all ages and genders) are well treated and well paid independent operators. So the world of caddies has changed in some places in ways that mean the element of exploitation no longer exists (though not in the developing world, where the barefoot caddie still exists in rather large numbers).
But it is ludicrous to suggest that playing with a caddie is "golf as it was meant to be". It is golf as it should never have been.