Hey. I'm Mike, I'm 17, I'm a senior this year, and from the first week of June to Labor Day I carried golf bags for grown men at Willow Bend Country Club for money. This page is about that. My English teacher last year said I should "write what I know" and this summer this is pretty much all I knew, so here you go.

Real quick, because people ask: no, I didn't get to play much (caddies can play Monday mornings before 8, which I did exactly twice all summer, because Monday morning). No, I'm not going to tell you which members are jerks by name. Yes, I have seen a guy throw a putter into a pond. Yes, I went and got it. Yes, he tipped me for it.

Last updated Sept. 22. Season's over, school's back, my tan line from the caddie bib is still there and it's embarrassing.

Everybody thinks caddying is carrying a bag. Carrying the bag is like 30% of it. A golf bag with fourteen clubs, a rain suit, six sleeves of balls, an umbrella, a sweater and (this happened) a full thermos of soup weighs about 35 pounds, and you walk five miles with it on your shoulder, so yeah, that part's real. But here's the actual job:

• Get to the club by 6:30 a.m. and sit in the caddie shack (a shed with a bench, a water cooler and a TV that gets one channel) until the caddie master calls your name. If you show up at 7 you go out at 11. If you show up at 6:15 you go out at 7:30 and you can get two loops in. Every single thing I know about being on time I learned this summer.
• Know where the ball went. This is the most important thing. You watch every shot all the way down, and you mark it against a tree or a bunker or something, because your guy is already looking at his club and complaining and he has no idea. A caddie who loses a ball in the rough is a caddie who doesn't get asked for again.
• Rake the bunker after he's in it. Smooth, from the middle out, leave the rake outside the sand the way the club wants (ours wants the handle pointing the direction of play; every club is different and the caddie master will tell you like you're dumb if you get it wrong).
• Replace divots, fix ball marks on the green, tend the flag (stand there holding the pin, pull it when the ball's rolling, don't let your shadow fall on his line).
• Clean the ball on every green, clean the club after every shot, wipe the grips if it's humid, which in summer it is always humid.
• Read greens, if he asks. Willow Bend has 18 greens and by August I knew which way every one of them broke, which is honestly more than some of the members do. You crouch behind the ball, look at the slope, and say something like "a cup outside left, and it's quick." Then he does whatever he was going to do anyway.
• Keep quiet. More on this below, but the number one thing the caddie master told us on day one was, "You are furniture. Talking furniture, when asked."
• Yardages. Know how far it is to the front, middle and back of the green from wherever his ball is. There are sprinkler heads with numbers on them and you learn to pace it off. I carried a laminated card the first two weeks and then I just knew.

OK so this is what everybody actually wants to know. Here's how it works at Willow Bend (other clubs are different, I only know mine):

So a decent Saturday with doubles in the morning and a single in the afternoon was like $150 plus tips. A rainy Tuesday was zero, because if nobody plays, nobody needs a caddie, and you sit in the shack watching the one channel. I worked 61 days and did 97 loops total (I kept a notebook). After buying lunch at the snack bar way too many times, I put away $1,840. See the Car Fund below.

Tip about tips: they're better at the end of a good round, obviously, but they're also better if you say "nice playing today, sir" and actually mean it. They can tell. They're also better if you found his ball in the woods on 7 when he was about to give up on it. I found a LOT of balls in the woods on 7.

Some of these are official club rules and some are rules the older caddies taught me, and honestly the second kind matter more.

1. Don't talk unless you're asked something. The members are out there to talk to each other, not you. The exception is "It's about 145 to the middle, sir" and "I've got it, it's just left of that oak." That's the whole list of things you say on your own.
2. Never, ever say "good shot" on a bad shot. They know. Say nothing. Hand him the putter.
3. Never laugh. I mean it. Not at a whiff, not at a shank, not at a guy who fell in the bunker (July 17th, he was fine). Turn around and fix a divot if you have to.
4. Don't step on anybody's line on the green, don't stand behind them when they're putting, don't let your shadow cross the hole, don't jingle the change in your pocket.
5. Don't give advice unless it's asked for. If he wants to hit driver on a 290-yard hole with a pond in front, he wants to hit driver. You just watch where it goes. (The pond.)
6. Never touch a ball unless he tells you to mark it or clean it. It's like a real rule of golf, he can get a penalty.
7. Know the rules of golf better than the members, because when two of them start arguing about whether the ball was in a hazard, they will turn to you, and if you say "I believe it crossed the margin about there, sir" like you know what you're talking about, the argument's over and both of them think you're smart.
8. White polo, khaki shorts, white shoes, the club's caddie bib. No hat backwards. No headphones, obviously. Nothing with writing on it.
9. The caddie master is always right. Even when he's not.
10. Get the bag to the parking lot and into the trunk. That last 200 yards is where a lot of the tip decision gets made, I swear.

I'm not naming anybody, I want to work there again next summer. But here's who you meet.

THE BEST:

• The Old Guy Who's Been a Member Since Forever. Hits it 190 yards dead straight every time, never in trouble, plays in like two hours forty, tells you a story about every hole, tips exactly $15 every time and shakes your hand. Best loop at the club. Everybody wants him.
• The Really Good Player. Like a 2 handicap. Doesn't need you for anything except yardages and the bag. Quiet. You learn more from watching him for four hours than from any golf show on TV. Tips OK, not great, but you don't care.
• The Dad Playing With His Kid. Doesn't care about his score, cares about the kid's, super nice to the caddie because he wants to show the kid how to treat people. I got a lot of these on Sunday afternoons and they were the best part of the summer.
• The Lady Who Actually Reads the Green Herself and then asks what I think and then listens. Tuesday morning ladies' day was honestly my favorite day. They play fast and they don't throw stuff.

THE WORST:

• The Guy Who Blames the Caddie. "You gave me the wrong yardage." I gave you 150. You hit it 130. Those are different things, sir. This guy never tips over $5 and always asks for a different caddie next time, which, fine.
• The Club Thrower. See putter, pond. Also a 7-iron into a tree, where it stayed. I had to climb the tree. There's no rule about climbing the tree. I climbed the tree.
• The Slow Guy. Four practice swings, backs off, four more, reads a two-foot putt from both sides. A five-hour round in July heat with a 35-pound bag. The group behind us hits into us on every hole and it's somehow my fault.
• The Guy Who Talks on His Cell Phone the Whole Round. New this year. The club has a rule against it and nobody enforces it. I'm supposed to be quiet and he's yelling about something in the fairway on 12.
• The "Just Between Us, What Does So-and-So Shoot" Guy. Trying to get gossip about other members. Caddies don't talk. That's actually the one rule I'm proudest of keeping.

I played a little before this summer, badly, with my uncle's clubs. Here's what 97 loops of watching other people play taught me:

• Nobody hits it as far as they think. Guys who say they hit a 7-iron 165 yards hit a 7-iron 148 yards. I know because I paced it off. The good players know their real numbers and that's most of why they're good.
• Short game is the whole game. The best player at the club is not the longest hitter. He's the guy who gets up and down from everywhere. He practices chipping for an hour after his round while everybody else is in the bar.
• Most putts are missed on the low side. Everybody under-reads the break. When I read a green I add a little more break than I think and I'm right way more often.
• Slow play is caused by like three people and everybody else has to deal with it.
• The bunker rake thing is a whole science. Also the sand at Willow Bend is way nicer than the sand at the muni, which I did not know sand could be.
• You can tell exactly who someone is by how they treat the caddie. That one's not really about golf.
• It's a really beautiful place to be at 7 in the morning with the mist on the fairway and nobody around, even if you're carrying somebody else's stuff. I didn't expect that part.

And I got better! I shot 89 on the Monday I played in August, from the whites, which for me is like a personal best by ten shots. I think it's just from watching. Also I've now seen approximately 400 different ways to hit a golf ball into a pond and I feel like I can avoid at least some of them.

The whole point. I'm saving for a car so I'm not riding to school with my little sister in my mom's minivan for senior year. The deal with my parents is I pay for the car, they pay the insurance for the first year, and I pay for gas, and if I get a ticket the car goes in the garage for a month.

What I'm looking at: something with about 100,000 miles on it that starts. My buddy's older brother has a '90 Civic hatchback he might sell me in the spring. It's brown. I don't care that it's brown. The caddie master says he'll put me on the fall weekend list (Saturdays and Sundays through October if the weather holds), and I'm bagging groceries three nights a week, so I think I'll get there by Christmas. Then a whole spring of driving my sister to school and making her pay me for gas.

If you're a kid thinking about caddying next summer: do it. It's the best job you can get at 16 or 17, it's outside, it's cash, the exercise is free, and you learn how to shut up and pay attention, which it turns out is a skill. Get there at 6:15. Bring a sandwich. Don't laugh.