Scottish golf lost one of its key figures last week with the passing of Martin Roy, the long time caddie master at Carnoustie Golf Links. No one ran a better caddie program than Martin. In fact, he was named Caddie Master of the Year by Golf Tourism Scotland so many times they should name the award after him.
Paul Lawrie & Martin Roy
What made Martin so special was his knack for finding and training such a broad range of people who all shared a passion for the game and a love for gnarly old “Carnastie”. You know those smelly, grizzled, bleary eyed Scottish caddies with an unlimited capacity for insulting remarks and little interest in your game? They were not in Martin’s stable. In their place were enthusiastic individuals who seemed genuinely engaged in maximizing your Carnoustie experience.
Over three decades of playing Carnoustie, three of my caddies immediately come to mind as typical of Martin’s recruits. The first was my very first Carnoustie caddie, Hamish. He was an 18 year old local who’d grown up on the links and was caddying that summer to earn some pocket money for his university days which were about to begin in Stirling. Back then, Carnoustie was like an aging actress who had not matured gracefully. The fairways were barely half covered with grass. The greens were spotty. The bunkers were ragged. And the clubhouse looked and smelled like a 1940s German bunker on the Normandy coast.
Hamish loved the old girl just the same and knew her history as well as I knew the exploits of my St. Louis Cardinals when I was his age. As we worked our way around the course, he described how each hole had evolved as well as when and why the newer bunkers had been added. The “Nicklaus” bunker on the right side of #9, for example, was added after Jack nearly drove the green during the 1968 Open Championship. Not only did he show me how Ben Hogan played #6 (Hogan’s Alley) in the 1953 Open, he described nearly every shot of the Wee Ice Mon’s final round despite the fact that it occurred more than 15 years before Hamish was born. He told me how Watson won the 1975 Open without carding a single par 3 on the 16th. Perhaps best of all, he told me why the 10th hole is named “South America”.***
I had already played Turnberry, Prestwick, Muirfield and the West Links of North Berwick before that day at Carnoustie. While I enjoyed each one of those courses, I fell in love with links golf once I saw the game and the course through Hamish’s eyes. That’s when I discovered golf across the pond is really about a lot more than how well you play.
Course management is especially important in links golf, a lesson I learned from a Carnoustie caddie named Giles. He wasn’t a local but rather a young Englishman who was spending the summer carrying a bag on the links in preparation for his entry into the 1992 British Amateur which was staged at Carnoustie. When I discovered that fact before we teed off, I asked Giles to steer me around the course the way he planned to play it. And so we were off. Drive down the left on #1 to open the green to the approach. Three wood off #2 to stay short of the bunkers. Four iron off the tee on the shortish #3 to give us a full club into the green. And so it went. Finishing with driver/driver into the wind on #17 and a 7 iron down wind to about 15 feet on #18. When I sunk the putt for a 75, Giles asked, “What do you play off?” “Six,” was my reply. “You must have a difficult home course,” he observed. As I handed him a rather large tip, I decided not to tell him the truth–I had played completely out of body. Rather I merely said, “brutal” as I walked off the course and thereby became the only person ever to describe Hyde Park G&CC in that manner.
And then there was Stuart. One day in the late 90s, Martin asked me if I would mind taking a new caddie so that I could show him what to expect from American golfers. I was subsequently introduced to a rather fit, well dressed middle aged man with a carefully trimmed military style mustache. As we walked down the first hole, he told me he recently retired from the Foreign Service to come home to Carnoustie, loved golf and decided to caddie as something to do in the summer. “Were you an embassy guard?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “an Arabist”. And that was the day I learned the difference between Sunni and Shia plus a lot more fascinating insights into the Arab culture. The golf course or the links game? Not so much.
Here’s to you, Martin Roy. Your caddies enriched the experiences of so many Americans like me who’ve played your beloved Carnoustie over the years. I will sorely miss you old friend.
***Some years ago a Carnoustie man declared after numerous drinks in his local pub that he’d grown tired of his hometown and its lack of opportunity. As he stumbled out of the place, he said he was going to seek his fortune in South America. Next morning the greenkeepers found him fast asleep on the 10th green and the hole has been know ever since as…South America!
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