His curiosity raised while watching the WOC telecasts of  the ’51 Western Open, Bob Noth made his way up the hill from his home in LeClaire the following spring and discovered an opportunity to earn some coin.

 

“I had an uncle and aunt who had been members here,” he recalled. “It was the only game in town, and I was a big kid for my age. So I talked them into bringing me to sign up as a caddie.”

 

Noth found a program flourishing under the direction of a young head professional named Pete Pelcher.

 

“I think they had 250 or 300 some caddies who were registered. What they gave you was a red hat with Davenport Country Club on it. And then a badge with a number on it,” Noth said. “There were A, B and C level caddies. I was a C. You’d come up here and sit in the caddie shack and wait for them to call your name. It was a three-tiered pay scale.  The A’s got more than B’s and the B’s got more than the C’s.

 

“The top 25 caddies were considered captains. And over the course of the next nine years I worked myself up into the top five.”

 

From the time the game found its way across the Atlantic, caddies carried the day at country clubs across America. After all, for golfers who wanted to play without a bag on their shoulders, caddies were the only alternative.

 

Although adapted for golf in 1932, electric and motorized carts were not widely used on the links until the 1950s. So, like Jack Fleck, many of the game’s most storied professionals got their start in the game toting someone else’s clubs. In fact, a full half a century beyond their fateful Sunday twosome in San Francisco, Fleck surmised the lifelong respect he was accorded by Ben Hogan grew more from their common caddie-barn beginnings than from Fleck’s stunning Open upset.

 

Notably, Fleck bested Hogan in 1955 using irons manufactured under the Hawk’s watchful gaze at the Ben Hogan Co. in Dallas. And it was Hogan who invited the unsung former caddie from Iowa to visit the manufacturing facility during a Texas tourney that spring. Hogan sent Fleck home to Iowa as the second pro to enlist Ben Hogan irons, and even hand-delivered a pair of wedges to the unknown muni pro from the Hawkeye state on the eve of the U.S. Open.

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“He was extremely nice to me, and I thought a lot of him,” Fleck said.

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Pelcher’s Caddie Yard

 

The DCC caddie program experienced its heyday when Fleck’s mentor Cunningham occupied the pro shop starting in 1936. The considerable number of “Dear Joe” correspondents who shared fond memories of their days on the bluff while fighting a war half a world away speaks to that.

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Pelcher, though, kept the program going and growing, even while cart use was beginning to pick up speed.

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He brought caddie roots of his own in 1945, when he replaced Ben Thomson, a former Yale head golf coach who had succeeded Cunningham as DCC’s fourth head professional three years before.

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Introduced to golf as a 10-year-old caddie in his native Springfield, Massachusetts, Pelcher's expectations for the boys in the DCC caddie yard were not insignificant.

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“I came into a well-run, fairly well-regulated caddie program,” Noth said of his arrival in 1952. “Well established. Long established. Everything went through the pro shop. It was a strong program before Pete. But he ran a tight ship. He expected us to be proficient, polite, and respectful of the golfers.

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“On some Mondays, and when it was slow out here on Thursdays, Pete and his assistants would run a caddie school. They’d teach us golf and they’d teach us the etiquette of being a caddie. Where to stand. And how to talk to the members. It was a good learning experience.”

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Warren West scored his first DCC loop at the age of 10, and he remains a fixture at the club five decades on.

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“That was back in the day when there were no wage laws,” West remembered of his early start. “I was just looking for money to buy school clothes, that kind of stuff.”

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The pay was meager by today’s standards, of course, but a coveted “double loop” — a bag on each shoulder — made it less so.

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“My first double, I went down the hill to the old No. 1 green and both bags hit the bottom and all the clubs fell out,” West recalled. “I was only 11.”

 

West grew in size and skill and became caddie master before he legally could drive. In the process, he grew so enamored with the game he dreamt of a future as a golf professional. Instead, he started working on the DCC grounds crew in 1968, was head superintendent from 1999 through 2013, and today serves the Country Club as Director of Facilities.

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Clair Peterson’s first caddie experience came at the age of 13 at storied Blue Mound Country Club near Milwaukee, site of Gene Sarazen’s third PGA Championship victory in 1933. Two years later, Peterson’s family moved to Iowa and he continued his caddying career at the no-less-historic club where Sam Snead failed to collect his third straight Western Open title in '51.

 

“My dad dropped my brother and me off on the way to work in the morning and picked us up at night.,” Peterson said. “We always got out and if we got out more than once, so much the better. We took our money, went around to the other side of the clubhouse, and bought a hamburger and a coke at the window. So we didn’t net out a lot but we learned and had those experiences.”

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Like Noth and West, the Peterson boys’ primary caddie tools were a badge and the red hat that was better than a thumb for would-be loopers walking to work.

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From DCC’s earliest days, some members like Nancy Bloch Weigle would find their preferred caddie for the day waiting at the foot of the Mississippi River bridge on the Davenport-Bettendorf border. Others just kept an eye out for that familiar red hat as they motored to the club.

 

“Often, 23rd Street or 18th Street on the way into to Bettendorf were the caddie stops,” Noth recalled. “And the reason we had those red hats and the badges was for the members to notice us when we were hitchhiking.”

 

Those red hats also were badges of honor that could be taken away as easily as they were given. Pelcher once caught the Peterson brothers pitching pennies while awaiting loops in the caddie shack. He took their hats and sent them home.

 

“What a transgression, pitching pennies at a caddie shack!” Peterson said in mock horror. “The next day the assistant pro gave them back. I still have mine.”

 

More than that, Peterson has a lifetime of memories built around the critical life lessons he learned with a bag on his shoulder at DCC. He ultimately found a career niche in the professional game, having served the John Deere Classic for two decades as one of the most well-respected tournament directors on the PGA TOUR.

 

“Golf changed my life,” he said. “There’s just no two ways about it. It introduced me to a game I’ve been able to enjoy for a lifetime. It had a lot do with where my career wound up because of my involvement in the game.”

 

Noth didn’t find his life's work in golf, but his caddie experience did help him build a successful career with Deere & Company.

 

“Work ethic and people skills, I learned those things,” he said.  “Learned when to speak up and when to keep my mouth shut.”

 

He also acquired a passion for the game, and, particularly, for the club he’s been a member of since 1993.

 

“I learned that the country club lifestyle was desirable, something worth working for,” he said. “And being a member of a club, whether it was Davenport or any club, that you enjoyed the camaraderie within, met friends with common interests. It was a good way to live your life. And I learned a little bit about business from some of the guys.”

 

Evans Scholars Play Here

 

Caddying elsewhere earned three future DCC members college educations through the Western Golf Association’s Evans Scholars Program.

 

Now, through a program launched in 2023 by DCC General Manager John Panek, Head Professional Brian Delaney, and a committee headed by Peterson, Noth and two of those former Evans scholars, several young members of a revived DCC caddie program soon may follow the Evans Scholars path.

 

Charles “Chick” Evans Jr. created the Evans Scholars Foundation in partnership with the WGA a year before Ralph Guldahl bested the Western Open field at Davenport Country Club. Nearly 12,000 young men and women since have benefited from a college education they might not otherwise have afforded.

 

Today, another 1,000 current and former caddies are receiving full tuition and housing at 24 leading universities across the nation, 10 through the newly established Evans Scholars Program at the University of Iowa.   

 

Current DCC members Tim Conrad and Matt Blaylock and former member Sam Allen exemplify the impact the Evans Scholarship can have on a young caddie’s future.

 

Allen retired as president and CEO of Deere & Company in 2019 after a four-decade-plus career built upon the foundation of a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management from Purdue University. That’s a degree he earned with the vital assistance of an Evans Scholarship.

 

Allen caddied 2 1/2 years at Kokomo Country Club in Indiana, learning enough about the game to win a spot on the Purdue golf squad, and enough about responsibility and professional comportment to ultimately become a respected captain of U.S. industry.

 

“You got to meet some characters, that’s for sure,” Allen remembered of his caddie experiences. “But you met some true gentlemen on the golf course, too, which caused you to want to emulate them. It just added to my desire to do and be the right thing, be a gentleman, and that carried over, both in terms of everyday life but also for sure on the golf course.”

 

Blaylock caddied at Olympia Fields near Chicago in his youth, and his Evans scholarship took him to Indiana University. There, an internship with the American Junior Golf Association led to a career in golf marketing that included several years as Deere & Company’s liaison to the PGA TOUR.

 

Conrad started a career in transportation and logistics the day after he graduated from the University of Illinois with the essential assistance of an Evans scholarship.

 

“I got the scholarship in 1977,” Conrad said of the life-changing moment that hinged on his work as a caddie at Glen Oak Country Club in suburban Glen Ellyn, Illinois. “I remember to this day how my mom cried when we got the envelope because I was the fourth of 10 kids and my pops never made over $20,000 in a year.

 

“Needless to say, college was going to be on us, so when I got the Evans Scholarship that was a pretty cool day. Went down to Illinois for four years, lived with 90 caddies, had a blast, got a degree in economics and went to work the day after graduation.”

 

With the assistance of Peterson, Noth and others, both Conrad and Blaylock spent the summer of 2023 leading the launch of the Evans Scholarship Foundation-affiliated caddie program at DCC. They are among hundreds of former Evans Scholarship beneficiaries recruited in recent years to help grow the number of universities in the foundation’s network, raise funds, and, thus, send more caddies to college.

 

There were eight schools in the network when Conrad earned his degree. Most were in the Big Ten and the vast majority of scholarship recipients were Chicago area kids who met the stringent academic and needs standards that still are in place today.

 

“They called it the Irish Boys Scholarship from Chicago,” Conrad said, joking only a little.

 

Today, the participating schools stretch from coast to coast and scholars come from every corner of the country, with varied ethnicities and backgrounds.

 

In April, the University of Iowa became the 23rd school to sign an agreement to host Evans scholars, and Howard University made it 24 a month or so later.

 

The foundation’s mission to increase the number of schools and scholars is especially ambitious at a time when caddies seemingly are as obsolete as the niblick and the featherie, all concede.

 

But the benefits are anything but obsolete, which is why Conrad, Blaylock and the DCC committee are determined to see the new program on the bluff succeed.

 

The work to create an Iowa City Evans Scholar House filled with 50 or more scholars within the next couple of years has the backing of Randy Winegard, CEO of the Burlington-based Winegard Company and owner of Spirit Hollow Golf Course. In addition to DCC, three clubs in Des Moines and a pair in Cedar Rapids have launched Evans Scholar Foundation-affiliated caddie programs in hopes of sending future scholars to Iowa City.

 

More than a dozen Quad City youngsters — including several whose first exposure to golf was through the First Tee of Quad Cities — caddied on the bluff in 2023, and plans were put in place to bring WGA staff to DCC to conduct a caddie school in March 2024. The hope is to see steady growth, and ultimately award scholarships to 10 or more QC kids in the not-too-distant future.

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Blaylock said success depends on two factors.

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“One is you obviously have to have kids who want to be out here, looking for the best summer job there is," he said. “Second, you have to have buy-in from membership.”

 

Peterson is confident the latter will happen. The commitment to using — and paying — a caddie is not inconsiderable, but the opportunity to assist the next Jack Fleck, Bob Noth, Warren West, Clair Peterson, Tim Conrad, Matt Blaylock, or Sam Allen is a worthwhile investment, he said.

 

“It has totally reinvigorated my interest in playing golf because of the good that may potentially come from using a caddie, and having my round mean something other than my own enjoyment,” Peterson said. “Getting to spend time around these young boys and girls has been great, too. They are just so refreshing. The ones we’ve identified have that work ethic and that joy of the game, that personality that is fun to get to know. You can’t help but put yourself back in that place when you were that age.”