A Call for the Bag-Carrier

#Shaming is not #Hating

Let's have more bag carriers.

Maybe 'Course Escorts" or "Ego-Strokers"

but don't call them caddies

Bandon Caddies re-stated:

"Our caddies are some of the most experienced in the industry. Our mission is to *enhance your experience* and we have found that our caddies *improve the flow of the game* for you and your friends when carrying two bags."

This is utter BS, it maybe helps the resort control pace of play, but carrying two bags is not caddying, it is Bag Carrying. 'Caddies' intrude enough on your experience DB, they cannot truly caddie, they herd you. What it does is devalue you the player. Bandon with such hubris calls themselves Golf as it was meant to be.

Caddies were always singles when I first started going there with just one kidney. A caddie is really only necessary until you get some idea about the course you are playing. True professional caddies carrying two doubles their pay and eases their output. I see stories on Team Titleist where people say "The caddie saved me 7-10 strokes?" What kind of a hack is that? That caddie is a Babysitter.

A caddie is not someone you hire for one day, it is someone you develop a relationship, a partnership with. You can have a caddie at your club that has a program. You can develop a deep relationship and I'm proud to say that teaching a young person to caddie is a treat. Only problem is those you train properly stand so far out from the rest of the bag carriers, that you start to notice that the caddie you want is unavailable.

Let's get the bag carriers to work.

HELLO World! (Oh wait, that's been taken)

18 month old post added

I have some stuff on golf, but first:

I've been working in the Wine World and no one needs my experiences nor opinions as the obsession with numbers and rankings is worse nowhere else in the world, I have three categories only. EVERYONE wants to buy off points rather than buying bottle and trying them.

• At least Robert Parker finally went away (his-self, anyway) in a messy orgasm spewing 100's. 
• Suckling gives 90-93 points or 100. 
• Jancis Robinson gives no 20's (and I love her for that) and she rarely goes over 18.5. 

Just drink the damned wine.

• You like it
• You don't like it
• You like it but someone else must pay for it.

Golf

Golf Digest still sends me a monthly copy from my years in the Golf Association of Philadelphia and GAP Tournament participation. I've found it interesting how their rating and rankings have changed over time and it is good that more and more people have been influenced by Bradley Klein and his original methodology at GolfWeek. Bradley was also at  the forefront of tree removal and pointing out how lush, green conditioning is offensive to good architecture for golf courses. I do think Brad deserves tremendous credit for changing the landscape, his role as editor for the no-defunct Superintendent News was also very important in his education which included being a professional caddie for the man who became the most dominant senior golfer. Ron Whitten has been one of the major reasons for my interest in architecture with 1981's The Architects of Golf and its 1982 revision The Golf Course, the former providing the lattice on which my interest grew. He seems in a funk calling out the business for only imitating, not innovation, but in reality Golf is played from a starting point (Teeing Ground) to a finishing point the Pin.  (Variable location on a Green within a Green Complex (Thank you Dr. Klein for making that important distinction so very clear).

Golf Magazine I will withhold comment, except to notice that it has taken several turns for the bias.

All the wannabe critics who just want an invitation to play go all nicey-nice and love the right architects and offend no-one hang out at GoffKlubAccess. Even Tom Doak, who was the other person who really inspired me to critique golf architecture, has tempered. He re-issued his bad-boy Confidential Guide to Golf Courses commercially by committee with aid from Masa Nakijima - a very even-handed opinion and Ran M and Darius Oliver - (two less objective view-pointed individuals), probably to be considered co-chairs of the C&C appreciation society in providing not one but a committee of four opinions on golf courses in various parts of the world, assuming that a too-obvious abstention hasn't occurred.

Tom has thrown the gauntlet for a consensus best holes built in the last 50 years in response to an article published in Golf Magazine constrained by the ridiculous notion that a hole in the 18 must represent the number in the routing that it occupies in the linearity on the course from which it comes.

Pfaff.