This story from the fabled Augusta Masters will in all likelihood end up being turned into a movie. Before that happens, you can savour Jack Bantock’s golfing tale of race, friendship, success and then labour market reform. Whilst we have grown up reading about the Augusta Masters golf tournament and occasionally watched it on TV, Mr Bantock begins by explaining something that none of us in Marcellus were aware of:
“Willie Peterson caddied Nicklaus’ first five victories, while Nathaniel “Iron Man” Avery was on the bag for all four of Palmer’s triumphs. Avery’s headstone was only installed at Augusta’s Southview Cemetery, in Georgia, in 2017, 32 years after his death. Three years later, a 10-minute drive away at Cedar Grove Cemetery, Peterson – who died in 1999 – received his.
They were just two of Augusta National’s original caddie corps, all of them Black men who, from the inaugural edition of the tournament in 1934, guided golfers around the fabled course.
Every subsequent year for almost half a century, they would play substantial – sometimes pivotal – roles in the destination of the green jacket.
The stories of the original group of Augusta caddies almost always began in the same place: Sand Hills.
Located just three miles from The Masters venue, the historically Black district lay adjacent to Augusta Country Club. There, local kids between 10 and 12 years old could earn a wage carrying the bag for members.
Around 90% of Augusta National’s original caddie corps grew up in the Sand Hill neighborhood, according to Leon Maben, vice president of the board of directors at Augusta’s Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History.
Eventually, many would hop across Rae’s Creek to begin work at Augusta National. Or as Ward Clayton, author of “Men on the Bag: The Caddies of Augusta National,” terms it: they “graduated.”
Mr Bantock explains that as the decades went by the African-American caddies became expert at guiding the golf players to success at Augusta: “If caddying was an education, then Willie “Pappy” Stokes was its headmaster.
Having grown up on the very grounds Augusta National was built on, a 12-year-old Stokes was hired to provide water to workers constructing the club. During bad weather, the youngster closely studied how rain streamed across the terrain, always trickling towards the course’s lowest point: Rae’s Creek.
That realization formed the basis of Stokes’ ability to read greens with near-perfect accuracy, a knowledge he imparted to budding students at Saturday morning “caddie school.”
At just 17-years-old, Stokes helped Henry Picard to the 1938 Masters title. He would retire after helping four different players to five wins at Augusta and having sealed his status as “The Godfather” of caddies.
Stokes’ knowledge trickled down to those that followed, epitomized by Beard in 1979. To this day, Zoeller remains the only golfer to win The Masters on his first attempt, as Beard steered the debutant around Augusta “like a blind man with a seeing-eye dog.”
And they were Zoeller’s words, not Beard’s, relayed by the American in “Loopers: The Caddie’s Long Walk,” a 2019 film co-produced by Clayton.
Maben often joked with Beard, who died in March aged 82, that Zoeller ought to give him his green jacket.
“These guys were ahead of their time,” Maben said. “They knew Augusta National like the back of their hand and were able to direct a golfer without any type of instrument like today’s caddies (use).
“They didn’t have no book to go by or no instrument to say how the wind was blowing that day, anything like that. They were the best at what they did.””
Unfortunately, like India, America is a society blighted by social malaise and racism played a critical role in determining where these expert caddies stood in the pecking order: “Though those who worked the bag were often close with the golfers they paired with, there was an enduring divide – social, as caddies, and racial, as Black men in America.
Only allowed to play the course on the days Augusta National was closed to members, caddies were “considered a lower class,” despite the respect for their craft, Clayton said. Maben, having spoken to many of the original caddies, agreed.
“That’s during segregation, Jim Crow period, and Black men was downgraded in society, called boy, n***er and all that,” Maben said.
“The way I analyze it, from a lot of the conversations I had, they knew their place at that time in society.”
In 1990, TV executive Ron Townsend became the first Black member admitted to Augusta National…”
And then came Augusta’s version of labour market reform and that washed away the caddies’ chance of earning a living at the famed golf course: “By the time Townsend arrived, most of Augusta’s original caddie corps had disappeared. For the first 48 years at The Masters, golfers had to employ the services of the club’s caddies, but from 1983 onwards, they could bring their own.
Part of the reason lay in events at the previous year’s tournament, when a miscommunication led to some caddies missing a morning tee time. Several golfers used the incident as leverage in their bid to persuade The Masters to allow players to bring the caddies they employed year-round on the PGA Tour.
Clayton believes the arrival of Tour caddies was a matter of when, not if. “There’s no doubt that there was still a large, large group of excellent caddies at Augusta National. But the depth of those caddie ranks were not as great as what the players wanted,” he said.
“It would just have been nice if it was done in a more seamless manner versus what occurred.””
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