They work seven days a week and sometimes do double shifts.
They do heavy lifting and other physical labor. They need a lot of expertise and very little ego. They have to wait on their employers hand and foot and must always be polite.
They also have, in their opinion, the greatest job in the world.
"A lot of the guys don't even see it as work," said Rich Mullin, who supervises about 75 of them as caddie master at Garden City Country Club. "People just love being out on the golf course."
Paul Tomacelli, 42, who caddies full time at Garden City, came up empty when he was asked about the worst part of it. He said, "You're catching people at their happiest. Even the most miserable stockbroker guys, when they come on the golf course, they're happy."
Caddying is not a lost art or a fading calling. Even at a time when golf carts are just about everywhere, caddying is thriving on Long Island, mostly at private clubs (as well as Bethpage Black, where carts are prohibited).
Friar's Head, the acclaimed course in Baiting Hollow, was built without tee signs or yardage markers because the owner, Ken Bakst, a former national mid-amateur champion, wants golfers to rely on caddies.
The job is big among teenagers, witnessed by the interest in the Long Island Caddie Scholarship Fund, which this year awarded 25 scholarships - $2,000 a year for four years. The organization drew a big crowd to its fundraising golf outing at The Bridge in Bridgehampton last week.
Some people remain caddying long after they are college age. Tomacelli is a lifer who will caddie at a club in West Palm Beach this winter. Others come back to caddying after years away. "I'm one of those stories," said Dave O'Hanlon, another of the Garden City Country Club caddies. The 32 year-old used to carry bags, read greens, tend pins and wipe off clubs in the 1980s, before he got his degree and started working on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"I was a broker in commodities, natural gas. They went electronic, so the brokers went to nothing overnight," he said. So back he went to the course. "I love golf."
Not that caddying is easy. "You can't be a fat slob and do this, that's not happening," Tomacelli said. It's not quite as stark as the old instruction to PGA Tour caddies - "Show up, keep up and shut up" - but protocol is essential: Offer advice on putts only when asked, never call a member by his or her first name, know the course inside and out and, yes, mostly be quiet.
A caddie is part employee, part coach, part partner. "It's a different relationship than it is say, between a bartender and a member," said Tomacelli, who carries regularly for certain members. They treat him well. He felt a part of it when one of them made his first hole-in-one this year. "You've got really solid, good people here," he said.
Caddies can make a solid, good living. They are reluctant to say exactly how good, given it is a cash business. "We're not making hundreds of thousands here," Tomacelli said. O'Hanlon did add, "I'm paying my bills right now. I haven't had to go into my savings. The perks include being able to play a good course for free."
So there is no shortage of applicants at Garden City Country Club. Mullin, who took up caddying after he lost an office job in Manhattan, said he had to limit the staff to 75 because the numbers get unwieldy after that. Caddies tend to go places. About 30 Garden City members are former caddies, including golf chairman Mike Sullivan and club champion Tommy Sullivan. That comes from club pro Don Beatty, a former caddie at Cold Spring Country Club.
It is one of the most honorable and venerable jobs in golf, and caddies believe it is here to stay. O'Hanlon said that as long as golfers enjoy exercise, there will be caddies. "There's also the prestige of having a caddie," he said.
As Tomacelli put it, "A lot of people here have the attitude, 'I did not spend all this money and join a country club to have my bag thrown on a cart.' "
