NOTHING ABOUT BRAWLING WITH TOWNIES? (SELF-REFERENCE ALERT):

At Camp Sankaty Head, Young Caddies Learn to Carry That Weight (STACEY STOWE, 7/23/09, NY Times)

At Sankaty Head Golf Club, a circa 1923 links course that features a working lighthouse and hugs the shoreline in Siasconset, some wait a dozen years to join a membership roster that includes Jack Welch, the former chairman and chief executive of General Electric, and Bob Wright, the former chairman of NBC Universal.

But for 79 years, Sankaty has widened its circle to visitors from places as far flung as the streets of Washington Heights and the countryside of Ireland. Each June, about 60 boys, ages 13 to 19, report to Camp Sankaty Head, stationed between the 11th and 13th fairways. The club is one of the last remaining caddie camps in the nation.

“They’re trained from Day 1 how to rake bunkers, tend pins, mark balls,” said Mark Heartfield, Sankaty’s head pro for the last 22 years. “But it’s not just a caddie camp. We really have a camp to help kids mature.”

For 10 weeks, the boys rise at 7 a.m. to the clang of a brass bell. They shower, dress in gray T-shirts, khaki shorts and red caps, and assemble outside three shingled huts for flag-raising.

Chores, like weed-whacking and mopping, are assigned at the all-camp meeting known as quarters in keeping with the military-style routine followed by Norman L. Claxton, who became camp director in 1962. A former Navy captain, Claxton was, by many accounts, a beloved authoritarian who never forgot what it was like to be a boy.

The caddies work six days a week, assigned at “the bench” above Sankaty’s parking lot. Carrying one bag — a tank in camp parlance — nets $70, in addition to a tip that averages about $20. In the evenings, caddies are allowed to play the 6,670-yard course, which Golfweek magazine ranked this year among the top 100 classic, or pre-1960, courses nationwide. [...]

About a dozen boys are from poor families. Sankaty has hosted boys whose prior camp was juvenile hall. Room and board is $5 a day, but the fee is returned at summer’s end to those in need.

Money management is a cornerstone of the camp. Each evening, the caddies deposit their tips and record their loops — the number of times around 18 holes. A typed list of campers and their earnings is posted on a wall of the mailroom, a section of the dining hall that doubles as a bank. Most campers earn about $3,500 over the summer, but the best caddies earn as much as $9,000.

Room and board was also $5 a day when I went there--1976-78. My first year I earned $350 or the exact cost of having been there (10 weeks--$35 a week). The next year I made enough extra to buy a set of Wilson Staff gold clubs ($300). We got $11 for a double and there were plenty of members--especially wives--who felt like their subsidizing the camp was your tip. But you could gold every night starting at 4pm (only the back 9 and not the 14th, from caddie tees where possible) and I was an 11 handicap as a 16 year old, despite using a classic caddy's baseball grip and never taking a lesson, and still play the Staff irons though they have a sweet spot about a quarter the size of modern clubs. I'm hoping our youngest will want to go in a few years.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 23, 2009 6:16 AM