By the time I was 13 years old I had worked my way up to be a Class A Caddy – a golf bag toter – at London Ontario’s Hunt Golf and Country Club. This was no small feat, for it had taken me all of the previous summer and much of the early golf season to obtain this level.

The Hunt Club was London’s premier golf club. In 1960 it was moved to the city’s far west end after being located next to Western University for over 50 years. Indeed, many prestigious tournaments had been played at the old course and the Canadian Open – a major US professional golf tour stop – was played at the new locale just ten years after it was built. Canada’s best amateurs competed at both locations, including C. Ross (Sandy) Somerville, one of the world’s best at the time of Bobby Jones, and also Nick Weslock, Ed Ervasti, and Gary Cowan who were Canada’s crème de la crème in the late 1950’s to early 1970’s. In later years The Hunt hosted the Canadian Women’s Open as part of the US LPGA tour.

Caddying at the Hunt Club consumed most of my days when I didn’t play myself at my club – Thames Valley Golf Club. To get to the Hunt Club it took me an hour on the bus. I left on the first bus at 6am because if you got there before 7:30 you could use a few clubs in the caddy shack to play on the course if there were no members teeing off early. Saturdays and Sundays were the prime caddying days and you often got two jobs on each of those days. My mom and dad were happy to see me caddy as it kept me occupied and out of their hair. I was happy, too, as it provided me with the opportunity to buy my first transistor radio with the money I had earned. It also gave me some immense pride to be associated with one of Canada’s best golf courses. At this time I lived and breathed golf.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s caddies were popular at many of the ritzier clubs. They were often young aspiring golfers like me who did it to earn money, to obtain a greater knowledge of the game, and to sometimes caddy for great golfers like the Hunt’s Jack Nash who was club champion countless times. It was a great honor to be at Class A caddie, but it also meant that you would be picked ahead of lesser ranked caddies to carry the better golfers’ bags. Sometimes the members asked for you and you went straight to the front of the job line.

Even though the bags were heavy, you could make extra money caddying for two golfers in the same group, carrying a bag on each shoulder and racing across the fairways to advise and service each member as they made a shot. Those big bags were often made of quality leather, the select ones with hand etchings done by Mexican leather craftsmen. In those bags were golf clubs and balls, gloves and rain suits, extra towels and some snacks (there were no water bottles in those days). Sometimes in those bags there might also be a mickey of scotch, consumed in equal shots at each hole. While this practice sometimes proved financially beneficial, other times it became a nightmare requiring you to chase erratic shots. Even so, I can’t imagine today carrying 100 pounds of golf paraphernalia around on my shoulders!

The club paid a Class A caddy $5.00 for each bag carried. You could therefore make $10.00 base rate by carrying two sets of golf clubs. It was hard work, but often you got a good tip. You would make $20.00, or even $30.00 carrying two sets of clubs, and sometimes if it was a special match you could earn as much as $50. Normally I would have at least two jobs during the day, and for the early tee-off times around eight or nine o’clock, I would often carry two bags.

I don’t know how I eventually met Dr. Rice. Perhaps it was during my Class C days, as he never played more than nine holes. Unfortunately, he always asked for me. And a nine-hole job was the kiss of death, as the best golfers (who generally paid the best) would be gone by noon when Dr. Rice finished. He would never tip and you received the club standard rate of $2.00 for nine holes.

Dr. Rice was well known at the Hunt Club. He often played alone. I assumed few members wanted to play with him. He was rude to everyone, but he seemed to reserve his wrath for the caddies. He threw his clubs and swore loudly. He blamed the caddie for missed putts and he made his caddie do fore-caddying. When fore-caddying, you would stand in the woods next to the fairway and carefully watch where the golfer’s ball landed. For Dr. Rice, fore-caddying was a license for trouble. He seldom hit the ball into the fairway and if he happened to hit the ball into the woods on the opposite side of the fairway from where you were standing, it was difficult to find the ball. If he lost his ball – and you would have to spend considerable time looking for it before he gave up – there would be an argument as to who would have to pay for the ball that was lost. On a number of occasions, I received no pay for my caddying because Dr. Rice said that it was my fault the ball was lost. The Club was told to deduct the cost of the ball from my caddy fees, and the Club generally sided with the member. I tried desperately to avoid Dr. Rice, but somehow he always seemed to find me. When he did, my day would be ruined.

One fateful day Dr. Rice asked for me and we began what turned out to be our last nine-hole round. Indeed, the good Dr. Rice was actually not so very good that particular day. I was the subject of verbal abuse and harassment from the get-go. I received tongue lashings for his poor play and on several holes I had to chase his clubs when he deliberately hurled them to either side of the fairway to make me walk farther. I often felt he would have been better off taking up javelin-tossing as a sport rather than golf, for his hurling skills were exceptional.

The ninth hole at the Hunt Club was an attractive par four running downhill at the beginning and then veering sharply to the right along the river floodplain. The Thames River was always just a little out of sight but to golfers such as Dr. Rice, it was a magnate for golf balls. Sure enough, Dr. Rice hit his ball into the river. It sent him into a tirade. He walked over to the river, took the seven iron he was holding and tossed it into the river. “Go get it, kid” he bellowed.

Now during our unhappy partnership, I had been asked to do many things for Dr. Rice, but never to retrieve a club from a water hazard. I had considerable experience recovering clubs from barberry bushes and from the forests lining fairways. But water was a different challenge. I was quite unsure how deep the water was, whether the current had taken the club further down the river, or indeed, exactly where the club had landed. And of course, he would still want his ball.

What I was sure of was that I had had enough of Dr. Rice.

Dr. Rice screamed at me to get the club and he was not sympathetic to my reasons for not doing so. He started to walk toward the club house, yelling at me that I would have to pay for the club, and the ball, and that he would never use me as a caddy again. The latter threat was music to my ears, but the former threats were not so good – I could see me caddying for nothing for the rest of the season just to pay off the loss. I would also be demoted to a Class B caddie and lose the privilege of caddying for the better players. All these undesirable consequences whirled in my head.

That’s when it struck me that I really had nothing to lose. I yelled back at Dr. Rice: “You are a mean and nasty man. You are cheap and a bully.” Somehow that part felt good. But the best part was yet to come. I looked at the river next to me and then at Dr. Rice’s huge bag. I picked up the bag and tossed it as far as I could. I watched the bag float slowly down the river and then disappear out of sight.

Dr. Rice didn’t know what to do. He started to run after me and then he decided to go to the caddy master. His face was red with temper but he was not the most athletic man. I realized I needed to run as fast as I could to get ahead of him. I raced up the hill toward the clubhouse while Dr. Rice stopped to catch his breath. I kept running down the long entrance to the club and even farther down the road to the closest bus stop. Fortunately for me, the bus was just coming my way – the every-hour bus. I jumped on and tucked myself down below the window as the bus slowly made its was past the club and toward downtown. It was the longest bus ride of my life, but I made it home with little fanfare.

When I came in the back door, my mother was surprised to see me but said that the Hunt Club had been calling and wanted to speak to me. I told her to disregard the call and I would get back to them the next day when I caddied again. In fact, each day after that I got up at the usual time as if to go to the Hunt Club but for the rest of the summer, as it turned out, I took the bus to the Highlands Golf Club where I began a new caddying experience. Starting as a class C was far better than facing the music at the Hunt Club.

To this day, I am surprised that the Hunt Club did not keep calling or explaining to my mom what had happened. Perhaps the caddy master understood why I had thrown Dr. Rice’s clubs into the river, and he sympathized with me enough to never really follow up. The mystery remains, but I have never again set foot at the Hunt Club. I am sure, though, that among the caddies of the Hunt Club for some time after that my name was whispered with a certain degree of reverence and respect. There may even have been some members who consumed a “wee dram” of scotch on the ninth hole for the day they heard that Dr. Rice got his just rewards.