The Golf Book
Bob Carney
The first miracle was that they'd actually pay you $3 or $4 to carry somebody's bag around a beautiful golf course. I mean, compare that to shoveling snow or cutting lawns.
The second miracle was that on Mondays, if you behaved yourself, they'd let you play the golf course. Just like the members! I had to pinch myself. The only stipulation was we had to tee off in front of the tee-boxes. One Monday, teeing off so early we could barely see our drivers in front of our faces, we played seventy-two holes. Total score: about 400 shots apiece. It was the most wonderful exhaustion I'd ever felt. One of the members sold me his old set of MacGregor Tourneys and from then on, golf was all I thought about. I was hooked.
The third miracle, the most amazing of all, was that they'd send you to college. Everything paid. The members told us about it, the Evans Scholarship, founded by golfer Charles "Chick" Evans, who won both the Open and the Amateur in 1916 but elected to remain an amateur and suggested the prize money be directed to start a caddie scholarship fund. The members helped us with the applications and coached us on what to say. My parents, Mary and Bill Carney, faced with the thought of putting six kids through college, couldn't believe the gift they got: two sons, two scholarships, and a million lessons in growing up.
It was not an instant miracle, of course. There was the application to fill out and, ugh, the interview. Can a person be more nervous than I was that day? Dressed in an un-caddie-like jacket and tie, finger nails scrubbed, I sat sweating in a small room at the Dearborn Country Club I'd never been in before—I think it was a Sunday—and faced a horseshoe of eight men, all in either green or blue blazers. These were the officers of the Golf Association of Michigan and the Western Golf Association, who would decide whether I was worthy or not. As a caddie, I'd grown used to sizing up members, had learned to sort the good guys from the not so good. I saw immediately that these were good guys, smart guys, confident and powerful. Despite their efforts to put me at ease, they were intimidating. For forty-five minutes I fielded their questions, explained why I thought I "deserved" the scholarship. Though, of course, I believed no such thing. In the end my grades (B+), my attitude (appropriately deferential), out-of-class activities, and the fact they knew my parents would never let me flunk out won them over. A few weeks later the letter arrived.
To me, Dearborn Country Club will always be a place of wonder and opportunity, a window into a world I used to think only "other" people inhabited. Did Henry Ford, when he established the club for his executives, have any idea that it would result in college education for dozens of his employees' children? That it would help to imbue thousands of kids—members and caddies—with the lasting values of a game he himself didn't even play? That he had, in fact, set up a crash course in the American Dream?
Maybe he did. Maybe he knew what he was setting in motion. He was a master of motion, after all.
The miracle Ford created continues for me today. I work for a golf magazine and have for almost twenty-five years. Being able to write about the game I came to love in a caddie yard thirty-five years ago has been a gift and a privilege. Sharing golf with my brother Tom, who caddied with me, makes it all the sweeter. Today Tom and I both belong to family-oriented clubs much like Dearborn and play in one another's annual member-guest tournaments. We take caddies, of course, never carts.
I still like to drive by Dearborn when I'm "home" to catch a glimpse of the kids in the caddie yard, knowing that there are members who'll keep the miracles coming for them. I look at the faces of the caddies at my own club and wonder if they feel the amazement I did. I hope so.
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