CADDIE'S ROLE:AS MUCH as those with a sense of history regarding the game of golf always enjoy returning to the cradle of the game in St Andrews, there is a serious compromise involved for for those who would tread in Old Tom Morris's footsteps at the Dunhill Links Challenge, which was held there last week.

A north-east wind cutting across the hallowed links, fourballs - two of them amateurs - and the downside of playing the unique links with its shared greens and criss-crossing holes is it took up to six-and-a-half hours last Friday for the groups to get back to the clubhouse.

If you were playing badly it was a logistical nightmare; if you were playing well it was a particularly arduous test of tenacity to remember what swing thought you had started with that morning and how do you possibly keep doing it frozen stiff six hours later.

There were images of jowls jutting underneath woolly hats and players and caddies making the most of their long links days with some idle banter. My link to the tour these days is through colleagues who keep me informed by email about the latest caddie-shack banter.

One of the tales was about Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano's caddie, who happens to be a Scot. He is known familiarly as "By the way, Jeff" for the simple reason he starts 90 per cent of his conversations, "By the way . . ."

Jeff caddied on the women's tour before moving over to the men's a couple of years back. He was at an event one week and a TV crew approached him about partaking in a documentary they were making about caddies.

A number of caddies contributed to the programme, all speaking in English, as it was an English production. Jeff gave them a juicy interview and he admitted he was particularly critical about the reality of caddying for the top European lady golfers.

A couple of months after his interview he received a DVD in the post, as promised, from the production company of the finished product. He was impressed by their efficiency and decided to look at what they had come up with.

He watched his colleagues' contributions, all of them with their differing English accents and then finally got to his part and was shocked: "I was ****ing subtitled," he told us indignantly, "It went, 'By the way . . .'"

For those of you familiar with our Scottish neighbours, travelling seems to thicken their accent and not soften it as you might expect.

The next tale from the shack during the many idle moments last week goes back to the Seniors PGA in Colorado with Bernhard Langer, Tom Watson and Hale Irwin playing together in the first round.

In a seniors event this is the equivalent of Tiger, Mickelson and whoever the hometown boy may be on the main tour. Irwin went to college in Colorado and still has a huge following there and naturally Langer and Watson are star attractions to the mature crowd.

They had a tee time of 9am in the first round and Irwin was first up. Things are very punctual at these events and clocks are synchronised. The crowd was 10 deep around the tee as Hale shuffled over his opening tee shot, the crowd having settled down after giving him a hero's welcome.

Irwin got to the top of his backswing and the deadly silence was broken by the chimes of the monument beside the first tee to commemorate a legendary cowboy famous in these parts when horsemen roamed the West. The chimes sounded traditionally at the top of the hour, and quarterly thereafter.

Now a younger man like Tiger Woods could have - and frequently has - aborted his swing at that point. Irwin tried but didn't quite have the reflexes to halt, producing a virtual whiffed shot that spluttered across the tee and came to rest behind a temporarily installed Rolex.

The crowd gasped, as Irwin stood tangled on the tee in disbelief at what had happened. Not only that, how was he going to get out of this one? Professional golfers will try anything to get relief or out of a bad situation, but this seemed to most - and particularly to his playing partners the stoic Langer and the uncompromising Watson - almost unbelievable.

Irwin called for a referee and asked if he could play the shot again, arguing the chimes of the lonesome cowboy as he made his swing constituted an act that had interfered with his shot enough to warrant a second serve, so to speak.

Well, thankfully, he didn't get to play the shot again but fortunately, the temporary Rolex was impeding his pathetic tee shot enough to get him relief and thus a clear shot back to the fairway.

It was a generous ruling and resulted in Irwin holing a lengthy putt for a miraculous par on the first.

It also resulted in the tee times being altered so as they didn't fall at the top, bottom or any quarter of the hour.

Those times were dedicated to the chimes of the Lone Ranger.