caddy are not required to Dunes of Bandonbut many guests consider them essential.
They look to the likes of Graham Banks to enhance their enjoyment of a resort that promises golf “as it was meant to be”.
Banks has been a Bandon bagman for nearly 20 years. When he landed the gig at the end of the year, the property was already out of business.
But few could have foreseen what was to come.
What began in 1999 with a single course and a handful of loopers on a lonely stretch of the Oregon coast has become a destination magnet with five 18-hole courses, two par-3 layouts and a caddy corps that swells to more than 500 in high season, serving a resort that regularly books up more than a year in advance.
By now, even golfers who have never set foot on the property have an inkling of what a Bandon journey involves. You wake up early, wolf down breakfast and play as many holes as daylight and your body will allow. Then you get up the next day and do it again.
But what does that routine look like on the other side of the bag?
GOLF.com spent a long weekend at Bandon Dunes, shadowing Banks and fellow looper Jason Castles, accompanying them from their pre-dawn coffee to their after-dark relaxation. The resulting video captures the rhythms and demands of their days, while pointing out a simple truth about their work: caddies aren’t just pack mules with rangefinders. They are guides, sidekicks, conversationalists, emotional support systems. The name, they can be, according to the wishes and needs of their customers. A good caddy is as good at reading people as he is at reading the greens.
At Bandon, the caddies are independent contractors. They are independent in spirit, too. Here’s what it’s like to walk in their shoes.
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