From the Caddie Yard to Leading the LICSF
ELMSFORD, N.Y. (September 20, 2024) – Four hours can be a long time to spend with someone, especially someone you may not know. Part of a caddie’s job is to break through that barrier of unknown and accompany their player or players on their walk around the course.
Those four hours can be instrumental for a caddie in developing personal relationships and networking. Over the years at Garden City Country Club, that has certainly held true as countless young men and women have come through the caddie program and have gone on to be successful in all walks of life, with many returning to the club as members and even participating on the club’s board.
Garden City CC has been a longtime supporter of youth caddieing, and currently, seven caddie scholars from the club are recipients of scholarships through the Long Island Caddie Scholarship Fund. The club’s caddie program took a step back due to the pandemic but has slowly come back from 2020 and continues to grow.
Michael Sullivan, the current president of the Long Island Caddie Scholarship Fund, and Patrick Donnelly, the current president of the MGA, both worked as caddies as teenagers at the club, where they both eventually became members. The two met in 1976 in the caddie yard at Garden City CC, became friends, and started a life connected through golf.
Sullivan started out carrying one bag before moving to caddieing for a foursome, carrying their putters and then graduated to carrying two bags per loop. Gaining an introduction and access to golf as a young teenager through caddieing helped Sullivan develop a passion for the game at a young age. Sullivan was a Long Island Caddie Scholarship recipient when he attended and graduated from St. John’s University.
“My father didn’t belong to the club, so it was eye-opening for me,” said Sullivan. “And a lot of people took good care of me. A lot of people who are members of these clubs embrace young people and want to give them, in many cases, the same opportunity that they had.”
Sullivan added, “Finding your way to the caddie yard can be life-changing. Young people working is an excellent thing, and giving kids a chance to see the world through this lens in many cases is life-changing.”
Introducing the younger generation to golf through caddieing has been a passion for Sullivan and a topic that he’s worked to support through his leadership positions with the Long Island Caddie Scholarship Fund and as a past president of the MGA and Long Island Golf Association. Always eager to share his golf journey, Sullivan preaches that having an access point to the game for young people in high school and through college can benefit them in countless ways.
“You can see how it helps their self-esteem,” noted long-time caddie manager at Garden City CC Rich Mullin. “And it’s also the image of hard work, getting there early, helping out the caddies, helping out the caddie manager, helping out the members, working as a team, and I think it stresses the work ethic needed.”
When Mullin hosts MGA Foundation Caddie Academies or when kids approach him about caddieing, he tells them, “There’s not another job in the world that I know of where you can spend four hours with a very successful doctor, businessperson, etc. And that’s the opportunity you have as a caddie.”
As noted by Mullin, the exposure to the members and the responsibilities entailed by being a good caddie can set young people up for success. A round of golf can provide invaluable networking, and caddies have the opportunity to see the world through their players’ professional success and be inspired by what it took to get there.
“We wanted to support the kids. It also helps with the speed of play and makes the whole round more enjoyable if you have a good caddie with you,” added Sullivan. “It’s the responsibility of a good caddie to show [their group] where or where not to put the ball, stuff like that. So, it helps a great deal.”
While some caddies from Garden City CC have stayed in the game and become teaching professionals, many have gone on to a wide range of careers, from firefighters to politics and finance. Those success stories all circle back to the club, which gives access to kids from the community who may not have been members at Garden City CC or elsewhere.
Sullivan sees the clubs supporting youth caddieing as a responsibility, given their position in the game.
“We are responsible for building more and wider on-ramps to give kids access to the goodness of the game, and the goodness of the game is all the things that we know that you realize and learn by playing the game,” said Sullivan.
One of the ways Sullivan personally tries to help caddies is by requesting youth caddies when he plays at other clubs around the New York Metropolitan Area. It circles back to when he was a young caddie and saw how the players he was caddieing for became successful.
“If a kid from a lower middle-class background is trying to go to Georgetown, every $5,000 matter. So, they get out of school with less college debt, and they caddie for two or three or four years, chances are they will stay in the game and someday themselves will give back to the game,” concluded Sullivan.