A golf caddy or golf caddie — depending on how you choose to spell the word — can prove invaluable to a golfer. When Tiger Woods fell out of the Top 20 golfers last week, the first thing he did was to fire the golf caddy who had been with through thick and thin over the past 12 years.
On July 20, 1999 the Independent Times newspaper in England published an article about golfer Jean Van de Velde who destroyed a three-stroke lead on the 18th hole at the Open Championship held at the Carnoustie Golf Club. He lost and what came next surprised everyone in the golf world. Van de Velde was of the opinion that his golf caddy was guilty of a gross dereliction of duty and that gross dereliction of duty is what caused Van de Velde to lose the Open Championship. The article published — with subheading — was entitled:
Golf-Open `99: Caddie not at fault for debacle
Despite criticism of `Christophe’, Jean Van de Velde can have no one to blame but himself.
On July 14, 1922 the New York Times reported on a very strange discovery the day before at the Rolling Road Golf Club in Baltimore, Maryland. In a story entitled, “Golf Caddie Finds Murdered Woman: Man’s Cap Is A Clue ” the following was reported:
When Robert Hall, a caddie at the Rolling Road Golf Club, chased a ball into some bushes near the tenth hole early this morning he leaped back in horror when, in reaching in the brush for the ball, he touched a body which proved to be that of a murdered woman. He quickly alarmed early players at the club, who in turn notified the police, and a dozen detectives were soon busy trying to solve the mystery.
In a New York Times article dated September 12, 1897 and entitled, “Women Here and There” the subject of women and acceptable women’s work was addressed by the journalist. In his article, readers were told of “enthusiastic church workers going into business in a small way to earn money for some good church work.” However, it soon discussed the inequality of the businesses, and some of the women were accused of “uncharitableness.” In part it states:
When a woman acts as a golf caddy or makes a celestial kind of punch for which she receives a generous sum from her interested friends, she is not interfering with other women’s work, and she may raise as much money as she likes, to her own and other people’s satisfaction. But when she announces that she will do shopping at a lower commission than it can be done elsewhere she is doing some hardworking woman who supports herself and perhaps a family in that way, a direct injury, and putting another obstacle in the way of solving the question which has agitated to many people: “How shall women receive equal pay for equal work with men?”
The word caddie comes from the Gascon Occitan capdèth. The Cadets de Gascogne became the captains who served in the French army in the 15th century and were comprised of the youngest sons of the aristocratic families of Gascony. From there, came the word le cadet which meant ‘the boy’ or the youngest of the family.
The word cadet — pronounced ca-day –was brought to Scotland from France in 1561 when Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots returned from France where she attended school since 1552. The first golf course outside of Scotland was built by Louis, King of France for Mary for her personal enjoyment since she loved the game of “golf” so dearly. To make sure she was properly chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from the military school to accompany her. Soon, it became tradition for military cadets to carry the clubs of royalty as they played the game.
The word cadet appears in print in English in 1610 and the word caddie along with the word cadie appear in print in 1634.
Interestingly enough, the first named golf caddie was Andrew Dickson who caddied for the Duke of York as a boy in 1681 in the Duke’s golf match on Leith Links. Andrew Dickson grew up to become an Edinburgh clubmaker of some note and so his name is tied to the game of golf for time immemorial.
Historically Speaking 