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## Chapter 4. When I Opened My Eyes (4)
Eventually, we arrived at the first hole.
“All right, let's do a little stretching before we start.”
I lined the customers up and led them through the stretches I had always done.
It might look like an annoying and merely ceremonial procedure, but for people who didn't normally exercise, it was surprisingly effective.
If you didn't loosen up your stiff body before hitting the driver, you could botch your very first shot or even injure yourself by straining a muscle.
It was especially useful for preventing lower-back injuries.
Of course, it also helped, albeit slightly, with relieving tension.
“One, two, three, four! Two, two, three, four!”
Fortunately, all four men followed along diligently without trying to slack off.
Wasn't this something everyone knew, even spies?
Stretching before starting a round of golf was practically an unwritten rule.
While we were all doing our exercises, the group ahead of us left the tee box, the starting point of the first hole.
The timing was perfect.
“All right, fi—nish!”
As soon as the stretching ended, all four men pulled out their drivers and began taking practice swings.
You could roughly tell someone's score just by watching their practice swing.
At a glance, two of them practically screamed high-handicap beginner, while the other two looked like they could probably shoot around 90.
I wasn't a fortune-teller, so I could be wrong, but with the eye of the golf genius Yoon Choseong, I was probably accurate.
Now that I had become a caddie, I naturally found myself making sarcastic observations in my head. And surprisingly, there was a certain satisfaction to it.
The moment had finally arrived for me to stand on the tee box, look out over the course, and begin my first duty as a caddie.
It was the moment when the second act of my life, which had somehow unfolded this way, was truly beginning.
Even so, there was nothing to be afraid of.
What could possibly scare someone who had already experienced being the king of the field?
My position had certainly changed, but my experience on the golf course hadn't gone anywhere. Naturally, I wasn't afraid.
I took a deep breath and raised my voice.
“Shall we decide the order?”
Damn it. After setting the mood so seriously, the first thing I did as a caddie was come over with an iron rod and decide the batting order.
What an anticlimactic moment.
Just a few days ago, I had been famous as a golf genius, and now this was my life.
Regardless, one by one, they drew the iron rods to determine the order.
After checking the order, I briefly explained the course.
“This is a 355-meter par-four hole. It's a right dogleg, meaning the hole bends to the right, so it's best to aim your tee shot toward the pine tree at the eleven o'clock position on the left. You can consider the landing zone, where the ball will come down after the tee shot, to be around 200 meters.”
“Okay!”
“Two hundred meters? That's easy.”
“All right, if you're ready, you can go ahead and hit.”
The first man swung his driver.
With all his strength.
Thwack!
As expected of a high-handicap beginner, he had no idea how to relax his strength.
And sure enough...
“It looks like it went into the bushes. I'll go check.”
Well, just by looking at it, it was clearly in an Out of Bounds area, or OB for short.
I was simply expressing as politely as possible that the ball had gone outside the designated boundaries.
But they had eyes too, so naturally they knew it was OB.
“You can tell it's OB just by looking! What are you checking for?”
The man watching from behind couldn't hold himself back and spoke up.
The man who had just hit the first shot spoke with a slightly dejected expression.
“Can't I have one mulligan?”
I expected it, but asking for a mulligan on the very first hole?
He was making an outrageous request right from the start.
Classic high-handicap whining.
“We have some bookings backed up behind us, so it'll be difficult to give you one on this hole. I'll see if I can give you one on another hole depending on the situation.”
“Can't be helped, I guess.”
Damn, he gave up quickly too.
The next player also hit OB!
The following player looked like he had the most experience and safely landed his ball on the fairway.
The last player landed just outside the fairway, in the rough.
“All right, let's move.”
I loaded my customers onto the cart and drove them to the location of their second shots.
“How far is it?”
The man whose ball had landed in the rough fiddled with a wood and asked how far remained to the hole.
Come on, couldn't you wait a little?
He was already counting his chickens before they hatched.
Did he really think he could reach the green in two shots with his skill?
And this guy was speaking casually to me right off the bat.
Now that the game had started, his true nature was coming out.
But if I couldn't even tolerate something like that, how could I make it as a caddie?
I felt a little irritated, but I engraved the character for patience in my heart.
“There are 205 meters left, but getting out of the rough is the priority, so I think it would be better to use a club you're confident with and focus on getting out.”
I recommended a short iron that was advantageous for the middle distance.
“I’m most confident with a wood.”
Seriously, and now he was bringing up a wood.
It was exactly the kind of reckless confidence a high-handicap beginner had.
No, perhaps it was more accurate to call it high-handicap greed.
“The rough is deep, so it'll be difficult to get out with a wood. How about using a pitching wedge or a nine-iron and lightly lifting the ball out?”
“Hmm... Should I do that?”
The man reluctantly followed my advice.
In reality, he probably hadn't been confident with the wood from the beginning and had only mentioned it to test the waters.
He had to preserve his pride somehow.
But could a caddie actually say that out loud?
Absolutely not.
The only thing I could say was as politely as possible,
“Yes. Just aim for about 100 meters.”
However, despite my advice, the man nodded and asked for a nine-iron.
‘He wants to send it a little farther than that, doesn't he?’
For an average amateur middle-aged man with that kind of physique, hitting around 100 to 120 meters with a pitching wedge was about normal.
The fact that he wanted a nine-iron instead showed his desire to hit even a little farther than the 100 meters I had advised.
Most amateurs thought hitting the ball as far as possible was the most important thing.
But that was simply excessive greed and ignorance born from not understanding the essence of golf.
‘Yeah, I understand that feeling.’
I took a nine-iron from the caddie bag and handed it to him as he requested.
But what was he doing now?
As soon as the man received the club, he didn't even think about hitting the ball. Instead, he became completely absorbed in practice swings.
Once, twice, three times...
Swish, swish!
He kept striking at the bushes with his iron.
Come on, even his practice swing is exactly like a high-handicap beginner.
Is he planning to spend all day doing this?
“Phew!”
Apparently even he was getting tired, because he let out a sigh and lowered the club.
At least that was fortunate. He had finally stopped after only seven swings.
Only after exhausting himself with those seven pointless practice swings did the man place the ball in front of him and take his stance.
I wanted to tell him, ‘Mister! If you do that many practice swings somewhere else, people will complain about you,’ but I held myself back.
I had no intention of getting into a huge fight with a customer on my first day as a caddie.
Besides.
Even just looking at his address, the setup he took before hitting the shot, he radiated the unmistakable aura of a high-handicap beginner.
And judging from the angle of the clubface, the flat surface of the club that directly contacts the ball, at the end of his hands gripping the club, it didn't look like he would be able to escape the rough in one shot.
But with customers like this, the best thing to do was simply let them hit however they wanted.
If I said something and their shot went wrong, they would dump all the blame on the caddie.
And as a caddie, the weaker party in that relationship, there was nothing I could do but take it.
Meanwhile, his companions were growing bored as they waited for the man's second shot to finish.
But why was this guy taking so long after getting into his address position?
How nervous was he?
Was there a lot of money riding on this?
No.
Looking more carefully, I understood what was happening.
He still lacked experience on the course, his address position wasn't ingrained in his body, and most importantly, he wasn't confident that he could strike the ball properly.
It was a phenomenon most high-handicap beginners experienced.
There was no way he could produce a proper backswing like that.
Sure enough, his difficult backswing didn't even reach the top before coming back down.
Tsk, tsk, tsk! Why is he putting so much strength into it? And his swing is way too fast.
Thud!
As expected, the clubface slammed straight into the rough.
He hit the ground behind the ball!
The ball bounced away along with a chunk of dirt.
The poorly struck ball dropped with a little tap only a short distance in front of him.
Distance: a mere 80 centimeters.
It was embarrassing to even measure it.
It was an entirely predictable result.
His body had stiffened from tension, and he had hurriedly dropped the club during the backswing, so there was no way he could make proper impact.
“Ah, damn it! What's wrong with this thing?”
He was getting irritated at the ball for a shot that had gone wrong because of his own inability.
As if the dirt, grass, and club were all at fault.
In professional terms, it was a high-handicap beginner's self-diss.
This was when a caddie needed to say something.
“Relax and try hitting it lightly.”
It probably wouldn't help much.
Still, it would at least be more comforting than saying nothing.
And now that I was a caddie, I couldn't neglect my duties.
Especially not with high-handicap beginners.
But the man once again stood over the ball and took his address position.
His arms were still full of tension, and his entire body looked stiff.
He hadn't listened to my advice at all.
Tsk, tsk. At this rate...
I approached him and offered advice again in a quiet voice.
“Relax your arms and just think about sending it 30 meters. Hit it lightly.”
Caddies normally didn't go as far as coaching customers like this, but perhaps because my habits from my days as a professional player were ingrained in my body, the words came out naturally.
This time, however, the man seemed to understand what I was saying and nodded.
After experiencing it himself, he had also realized that getting out of the rough was the priority.
Inexperienced high-handicap beginners didn't understand how tough the grass in the rough could be, so they simply tried to attack the ball head-on.
Their greed came before any acknowledgment of their own ability.
And the result was that nine times out of ten, they hit behind the ball like before and then engaged in another round of self-blame.
So experiences like this weren't necessarily a bad thing for beginners.
No, perhaps they were an inevitable part of learning.
All of this accumulated as experience.
Swish!
The man slowly moved the club backward.
He was shortening the width of his backswing and focusing on making contact with the ball.
The speed at which he brought the club down wasn't as fast as before either, which wasn't bad.
Then he lightly struck the ball as though he were putting.
Clack!
‘Hmm? This guy actually listens better than he looks.’
The ball landed nicely in the exact center of the fairway.
“Wow! Good shot!”
His companions looked more than a little surprised, but they all shouted, “Good shot!”
They had clearly expected him to go all out, so they seemed surprised that he had suddenly chosen to lay up.