e
thing--The caddie who knows too much--My ideal caddie--His
points--The girl caddie--A splendid type--Caddies' caustic
humour--Some specimens of it--Mr. Balfour's taste in caddies--When
the caddie is too anxious--Good human kindness--"Big
Crawford"--"Lookin' aifter Maister Balfour"--An ingenious claim--A
salute for the Chief Secretary--A story of a distressed
clergyman--Sandy Smith--The clothes he wore--An excess of zeal--The
caddies' common-sense--When his lot is not a happy one.

The caddie is an indispensable adjunct to the game of golf, and for the
most part he fulfils his functions very capably; but there are caddies
of every imaginable variety, and their vagaries are such as to cause
wonderment on the part of their employers sometimes, amusement at
others, and not infrequently exasperation. Some of them know too much
about the game, and others far too little, and I hardly know which of
these classes is in the long run the worse for the golfers who engage
them to carry their clubs.

An incident of which I heard that happened to a well-known player on the
North Berwick links, must have been very trying to him. On a busy day
all the regular caddies had been engaged, and the fishermen were drafted
into the club-carrying service. The player, having asked one of these
fishermen if he knew anything about the game, and having been informed
that he had only a little knowledge of it, resigned himself calmly to
the inevitable, and told the man complacently that he would do. This
player happened to be left-handed, and took up his stance on the first
tee accordingly, whereupon the son of the sea at once adopted the part
of tutor, and with some warmth and show of contempt exclaimed loudly, "I
dinna ken much aboot the game, but ye dinna ken a wee bit. Mon, ye're
standing on the wrong side of the baw! Awa' to the other side!" Golfers
at the beginning of a round are proverbially susceptible to small
influences, and when a player is accustomed to lean somewhat upon his
caddie, as even some of the best occasionally do, I can well imagine
that such a trivial matter as this is enough to mar a tee shot.

There were some strange specimens of the caddie species at Ganton when I
was there. "Make a tee, boy," said a golfer to one of them, evidently a
novice, one day. The player had been waiting about for something under a
minute, while his servant showed no sign of making the usual
preparations