Caddie Karen becomes golf's main character of the week in wild pro-shop meltdown video
One of the unique quirks of fall golf is the sudden disappearance of caddies every September. As soon as the school bell rings each autumn, countless clubs across America are left short-staffed in the looper department as the teens they relied on all summer head back to school. Most people understand that education is more important than lugging some retiree’s staff bag over hill and dale, but unfortunately not this golfer, who went viral this weekend for a meltdown at Chicago’s Beverly Country Club that must be seen to be believed. [Editor's note: Golf Digest does not condone the "men-only" sentiment of the tweet itself].
“This is unacceptable!” she begins with the one of the most important phrases in the Karen lexicon. “I have guests that have played Medinah and are playing Shoreacres. … I’m gonna bad mouth this club all day if we don’t get this together!”
“Figure it out. I’m not going out until I have two caddies for three people. Nobody said a cart. I talked to you today. I wrote a letter. Nobody ever used the word cart. John [now addressing the club pro who pulled out his phone to film the ordeal], this is bullshit! It’s not unusual for Beverly to treat people like this, especially women. I organized this months ago, I wrote a letter yesterday that I never got a response to and I called this morning, and this is how I’m going out to play golf. I want two caddies. I’m not taking a cart and my guests shouldn’t have to take a cart! They want to walk!”
As the club employees explain, Beverly C.C. utilizes a youth caddie system during the summer months. When those caddies go back to school in the fall, that pool dries up significantly. Unfortunately, that response only fanned the flames.
“You’re a fucking liar,” she replied to the club pro. “Because there’s three caddies out there ahead of me and there’s caddies over there [gestures toward the back of the pro shop] … I apologize, it’s just because I’m a woman—”
When the employees once again allege that it has nothing to do with her gender but instead the caddie shortage from the back-to-school season, the woman storms off and the video ends.
Obviously, we weren’t in the room for this exchange. Golf Digest reached out to Beverly C.C. for comment and have not heard back, so we don’t know who was in the right or who was in the wrong. Perhaps the woman had a valid complaint. Perhaps she reserved caddies months in advance and received no notice that the reservation couldn’t be accommodated until she arrived at the course. As Jerry Seinfeld once quipped, “you know how to take the reservation, but you don’t know how to hold the reservation, and that’s really the most important part of the reservation.” If so, Beverly deserves its share of the blame, especially if gender played any role in the botched reservation.
What we do know, however, is that cursing at club employees, calling them liars and threatening to “bad mouth” the club to your hoity-toity private friends does not fall within the ever-broadening borders of golf decorum. Simply put, it's a "bad look." No matter how wronged you may be or whatever else you have going in your life that pushed you to the brink, if you think this behavior is going to get you what you want and inspire someone to go above and beyond for you, well, let’s just say you and I weren’t raised the same.