It’s 12:30pm on Wednesday. You just received the fabled “Are you free?” text.

Slipping out of the office unnoticed, you throw your work bag into the back seat as you speed out of the parking lot. You tell yourself you’re “entertaining clients”.

15 minutes and a discreet shoe change later, you’re standing on the first tee, cracking one vertebrae with every exaggerated practice swing.

The air is warm, the wind is down, and you’ll be home in time for dinner.

There's a thread on X from a guy named “Merion Chuck” that gets the caddie economics exactly right. Chuck's thread lays out the supply-demand problem better than most clubs understand it.

I’ve had similar experiences to Chuck over the past few years.

The going rate of $200 per bag is a lot, yes. Five years ago it was probably $120 or so per bag, and a decade ago (when I was a caddie), I was happy with $80 per bag. So, what changed?

You won’t find caddies at every golf club in the world. It’s a tradition historically tied to older clubs with a particular membership demographic. The clubs tend to heavily encourage walking, and tend to be quite old.

Twenty-five years ago, the game of golf was a lot smaller, so the pool of caddies moved from northern club in the summer to southern club in the winter. A migration of sorts.

The caddies would bounce back between the same clubs each year.

Now? The game is exploding, especially down south. Lots of money moved to Florida during covid, and almost none of it left. We have clubs popping up left and right with $500k initiation fees, coupled with insatiable demand.

With the hockey-stick increase in demand in such a short period, clubs lost their pricing power. If the course down the street now pays $200 and your club only pays $150? Not only will they lose all of their good loopers, but they will have a hard time attracting any caddies at all.

Some clubs have caddies that are worth every penny. You can close your eyes, pick at random, and the guy on your bag will be a net positive to your overall experience.

I have only played one or two places like this, and I think you could probably count the total number of them on two hands. Some clubs just know how to build a program the right way, and have the membership and golf course that attracts top-end talent. These clubs are rare!

You’ve probably seen a few of these places on top 100 lists, but I’d go as far to say you’ll find some elite caddie programs at small private clubs that are off the beaten path.

I’m not here to extol these clubs, however. In pursuit of attracting talent, clubs raised rates to $180+ with no corresponding bar for quality. They had no choice! Either pay market rates or lose your guys for good.

Since the clubs have all increased rates, golfers are now, by definition, overpaying for caddies most of the time. The price increase was not due to a skill increase or service expansion, as you may expect, but rather due to the popularity and growth of the game, especially at the higher end clubs.

Clubs not only lost pricing power, but also cannot be highly-selective about the guys in the shack anymore. They need warm bodies. The bib doesn't mean what it used to.

There’s no real barrier to entry either. Outside of a few places (like Sankaty) true caddie training programs are nonexistent.

Paying $200 for a professional who cleans your clubs fastidiously after each shot, reads greens like he’s played the course a thousand times, and knows when to speak and when not to is a fair price.

Paying $200 for a college kid who doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t clean the clubs, and is generally checked out is frustrating, and sadly detracts from the experience of the day.

Clubs should have tiered caddie programs. College kids who have been carrying bags for three months shouldn’t be making what forty year vets make for a loop. When I caddied, the club had different color bibs for corresponding levels of seniority. The college kids had yellow bibs, the senior guys had red bibs, and the older legends of the game (all in their 50s or older) had black bibs.

This seems to be a good solution to the problem. Start young, and only once you show proficiency and dedication to the craft can you move up to a higher earning bracket.

In light of today’s thematic column, I did some digging on some of the cooler events on the golf calendar each year that nobody talks about - the caddie-only tournaments.

Coast to coast, at clubs both public and private, caddies who moonlight as serious players finally get their turn to compete on some of the finest courses in the world.

Many of the loopers at Bandon, Cypress, McArthur, Seminole, etc are excellent players in their own right. If you ever get the chance to play at one of the clubs listed in the article, I suggest you make small talk with the guy carrying your bag to see if he or she once had aspirations of playing on TOUR.

The linked article above is worth the read. It not only highlights what makes the tournament special, but reinforces the importance of clubs offering a strong caddie program. I’ve found that great players often make the best caddies. They can read greens and intrinsically understand etiquette.

Some of the famed tournaments listed in the article:

THE GEARY CUP

BATTLE FOR THE BELL CUP

THE BERKELEY CUP

THE ’56 CUP

THE LOOPER CUP

Dropping Old Memorial in here today which is overshadowed by Seminole and McArthur in any caddie conversation.

Some background on the genesis of the program at this Tampa-based club:

When two of the men who built Outback Steakhouse decided to open a golf club in Tampa, they banned carts. They hired a head professional who'd come from Pine Valley, and he arrived with a clear brief: build the caddie program the way Pine Valley built its caddie program… as a core element of the experience, not a questionable add-on to it.

Old Memorial now operates one of the largest independent contractor single-bag caddie programs in the country. Over 100 loopers carrying single bag. Not doubles. Not riding alongside a cart and pointing at the pin. One caddie, one player, all eighteen holes on foot.

Steve Smyers built a Melbourne Sand Belt course where the angles only show themselves as you walk. The caddies are a genuine value-add. Whether you listen is a personal choice.

There are a hundred clubs in Florida with cart fleets, resort-width fairways, and beverage carts every three holes. There are only a few with a commitment to building a proper caddie program like Old Memorial.

Call me old-fashioned, but I love a good SC Newport.

Over the past few weeks, I sent the entire first draft of the book to three people whom I trust in my inner circle.

What happened next surprised me: They all gave me the exact same feedback.

I won’t get into specifics, but it was a strange feeling to hear the same echoed sentiment from three independent sources.

The book remains on track for a mid to late summer release. As always, readers of this publication will be the first to know when the pre-order goes live.

To hold you over, here are a few sketches of illustrations from my illustrator, Joe Woldt.