Local Caddies Wait in Vain to Hoist a Bag : Golf: Most traveling pros either bring their own carriers or select from a coterie that follows the tour.

Three days before the GTE West Classic in Ojai, local caddies were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Arnold Palmer, who was going to choose one of them to carry his bag.

Updates were given every hour, none of them encouraging: Arnie decides to use an assistant at the pro shop. . . . Arnie’s bringing his own caddy after all. . . . Arnie isn’t bringing his own caddy but will hire a seasoned traveling caddy who can withstand the pressure down the stretch.

As long as Palmer hadn’t arrived at the Ojai Valley Inn & Country Club, the 20 local caddies still had hope. But not much. The possibility that Palmer--or any of the 78 PGA seniors playing in the tournament--would select one of them was pretty slim. In each of the four previous tournaments held in Ojai, only three or four local caddies had been used.

Most pros either bring their own caddies or select from a contingent of traveling caddies, angering the locals: “We resent it,” says Rick Bailey, 37. “We get here at 5:30 (a.m.) on Monday to sign up and still don’t get picked.”

The reason for the snub has little to do with snobbery. The pros know that locals who show up at pro events probably have little or no experience. “We got a college kid here who wants to caddy but doesn’t even know where the first tee is,” says Bob Martin, a volunteer in the caddy shack.

Although some local caddies have experience--Bailey started caddying as a kid--pro golfers can’t take a chance. “If you’re a pro, you don’t want to spend all week teaching your caddy how to be a caddy,” says Joe Ryan, the tournament’s volunteer caddy master.

Throughout the country, qualified local caddies have become obsolete, disappearing faster than the spotted owl. A fixture since the dawn of golf on the course, especially at private clubs, caddies were kids making a few bucks on the weekend or grizzled golf bums hanging on to the game. Some caddies could even make a living carrying bags at their local club. But now, caddies have vanished completely from public clubs and are almost extinct at private clubs.

“Caddying is a lost art at country clubs,” says former Masters champion Bob Goalby.

Oddly, in the age of aerobics, it was the electric cart that put caddies out of business, Ryan says, sitting on a folding chair in the caddy shack. The structure is actually a temporary three-sided tent, shacks having been replaced by cart sheds when clubs discovered that members would rather pay $25 to drive a cart and haul their own bags than hire a caddy and walk (thereby confirming golf’s reputation as a lazy man’s game). As the demand for caddies vaporized, clubs dropped their caddy programs while kids became paperboys or just watched cartoons on Saturday mornings.

Aside from forcing clubs to pave the course with miles of asphalt paths, carts chew up fairways and prevent golfers from getting any actual exercise. People like Ryan who advocate bringing back local caddy programs point out that carts don’t replace divots, rake sand traps or repair ball craters on greens the way a good caddy does.

Carts also don’t give advice. During amateur qualifying Tuesday, only a handful of the 136 golfers used caddies. “You pay $300 for a round of golf and don’t spend (a little more money) for a caddy?” Bailey says in disbelief. “Why wouldn’t you want to ask a caddy which club to use or where the ball’s going to break on the green?”

As a boy in Michigan, Bailey caddied “in the summers for spending money,” making $2.75 for nine holes. Now a Seabee stationed at Point Mugu Naval Air Station, Bailey takes leave to caddy at the seniors tournament. In the last few years, he’s been able to carry the bags of Jack Fleck and Billy Maxwell, charging them $60 a day.

Bailey’s success comes from know-how and persistence. To persuade Maxwell to use him again this year, Bailey wrote him a letter and followed with a phone call. “You’ve got to be a hustler,” he says. Adds Martin: “You’ve got to make the deal and close the deal all in one fell swoop.”

Most local caddies don’t know how the system works. “The young ones who never caddied before think the golfers just ask for them. Wrong,” Ryan says. “You have to apply for the job. As soon as the golfer drives up and opens his trunk, a quick and smart caddy will be helping him.”

Ryan, a 59-year-old retired oil-field mechanic from Taft, Calif., can spot a seasoned traveling caddy as soon as one checks in at the tent. “They know the procedure. They come in here with assurance. Like this kid,” he says, watching Mike Edwards fill out a form. Sure enough: Edwards caddies for his grandfather, Ben Smith.

The majority of caddies who work pro tournaments are the traveling caddies--so-called because they follow men’s and women’s tours. Some who have long-time associations with players can make as much as $600 a week and 5-10% of the golfer’s prize money, but only about “20% of us make a good living,” says Mike (Big Red) Hartkop, a mountainous 41-year-old caddy sporting a reddish beard and straw cowboy hat.

Hartkop is a typical traveling caddy, wandering the golf wilderness for 25 years. Growing up in Monterey County, he caddied at local clubs and earned his spurs at the Crosby Open. Dropping out of high school, he became a full-time tour caddy because it “was something different from going to school. And I liked traveling around.”

Over the years, Hartkop--which means hard head in German, he says--has caddied for such pros as JoAnne Carner, Kermit Zarley and Jim Colbert. Although he skipped the recent Los Angeles Open, he was casually confident of getting a bag in Ojai.

“There are four or five bags still to come in,” he says three days before the tournament, “and three traveling caddies without bags. Something will happen.”

How? “Some caddy will get drunk and not show up,” Hartkop says, adding: “You have to be in the right place at the right time.”

A rumor has Palmer arriving in a helicopter, landing on the 18th fairway.

As it turned out, Palmer was chauffeured to the tournament in a sponsor’s luxury car and Hartkop was asked to caddy for Bruce Devlin. The rumor about Palmer wanting a local to caddy was true. However, the chosen one wasn’t among the 20 men who had signed up at the caddy shack. Last weekend, tournament director Skip Whittet tabbed Steve Butler, the assistant golf pro at Soule Park, which is a few miles down the road from the club.

Butler, 27, had never met Palmer before carrying his bag in the Pro-Am on Thursday. “I didn’t realize what a big honor this was until people started coming up to (Palmer) and asking to caddy for him for nothing,” says Butler, who was so rattled by his assignment that he “never even discussed” his fee.

Butler’s caddying background was limited to a few rounds for friends but his knowledge of the Ojai course and his golfer’s savvy made up for it. Palmer, he says, requests yardage estimates and occasionally asks him to read the green. “He’s easy to get along with and not demanding” says Butler, who lives in Carpinteria. “All he really wants is for me to be there before he gets to the ball.”

It was probably inevitable that something as uncomplicated as caddying would be replaced by a machine. But the old days bring back wistful memories.

“Four golfers and four caddies, all walking the course,” Goalby says. “Now that’s the only way the game should be played.”