There's one benefit to being a caddie. “At least I don’t have to hole the three-footers,” said Colin Gillies. Now, he can just stand back and watch other folk missing them.
From the dominant force on the Tartan Tour to a heaver of heavily-laden bags on the delightful links of Kingsbarns, Gillies’ latest venture in a long career may not seem like the obvious route to take for a man who has been plagued by back injuries and has a touch of arthritis in his wrist.
Let’s face it, lumping a variety of golfing odds and sods around, particularly on a bitter April day featuring a welcoming forecast of “30 mph winds and some rain on the way”, must be as cumbersome a burden as the weight Atlas used to carry on his shuddering shoulders.
Gillies seems to be enjoying golf from the other side, though. “One of the young lads I used to teach is an assistant up here and I caught up with him for a beer over Christmas and was saying how I was struggling for work,” said the former Scottish PGA champion, who took a step back from his coaching post at Kingsfield and was set for a new start in Germany until a late hitch. “I thought I’d come up here for the season and see how it works out. As of next week, I’m moving here. It’s incredibly busy and they are booked up until October so there’s a bit of money to be made.
“I had a few caddies down the years, and there was a regular mob who obviously don’t exist for tax purposes,” added Gillies with a chuckle as he jokingly acknowledged the nod-and-wink environment some of the bagmen exist in. “On the Tartan Tour in those days, I was one of the few who could justify a caddie. I was making enough money and it was paying for itself.
"There were quite a few arguments with the caddies and most of them were drink related on their part but, now seeing the game from the other side, I’ll probably learn to appreciate what they do much more now.”
Life begins at 50 and all that but Gillies probably didn’t imagine his sporting life developing quite like this as he reached his half century. “The European Senior Tour was always the ambition, from when I was in my mid-40s, but once you get away from the competitive side for too long it’s hard to get that back,” said Gillies, who retired from full-time competition on the Scottish PGA circuit in 2012 but still harboured hopes of re-emerging among the golden oldies.
“I was all set to be a free spirit and give the Senior Tour a go but the old injuries simply caught up with me again. The reality was that I wasn’t going to be able to play to anything like the standard I used to be at.”
That particular standard saw Gillies, a former assistant to Bernard Gallacher at Wentworth, clean up domestically during a quarter-of-a-century on the Tartan Tour. He was the first player to break the £1/2 million barrier in career earnings on the domestic circuit and remains its all-time leading money winner. His haul £513,747 is a record that is unlikely to be beaten.
A prolific winner in his pomp – he chalked up over 120 victories on the Scottish scene – Gillies currently doesn’t own any tools of his trade. “I sold my clubs,” said Gillies, who is happy to advertise his caddying services to any of the global game’s links novices competing in this season’s RICOH Women’s British Open at Kingsbarns.
“The last time I played was in an over-45s event back in August 2015. I made a two on the last and that was a nice way to finish. But over the years, I’ve decided that it’s too frustrating playing badly.”
Most of us mere golfing mortals regularly find a way of getting over that, of course, and Gillies is well aware of the game’s rich tapestry. “I’ve been teaching golfers for 30 years so there’s not much I haven’t seen,” he said.
An outing of swiping, thrashing golf writers at Kingsbarns last week may have been an eye-opener, mind you.
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