July 2026 - Looping on Chicago's West Side

Columbus Park GC hosts growing caddie program
Photographs by Charles Cherney
This article appeared in the July 2026 edition of Chicago District Golfer.
To read more Chicago District Golfer stories, head to our article archive.

Aspiring caddies primarily from Chicago's West Side undergo several training sessions before they begin toting bags at Columbus Park Golf Course.

For nearly all of its 116-year history, Columbus Park Golf Course on Chicago's far west border was not a place golfers would have expected to find a caddie to help them navigate the nine-hole track. This historic Chicago Park District course, designed by renowned architect Tom Bendelow, attracts golfers to the 2,787-yard, par-35 layout. As with almost all public courses, the golfers have the option of riding or walking by carrying their own bag or using a pull cart.

Then, two summers ago, Columbus Park was on the leading edge of what hopes to become a trend, as they instituted a caddie program. They welcomed a group of high school-age boys and girls to a caddie training program. Now, Columbus Park golfers can partake of an experience more common at private clubs by taking a caddie.

More importantly, the caddies – nearly all of them drawn from West Side neighborhoods – are exposed not only to the game of golf itself, but also to the side benefits better known to people of more affluent communities, particularly the networking opportunities that have always been part of golf’s inside game.

Not to be overlooked, caddies who put in the time and effort learn there’s a good buck to be made over the course of a summer. They’re paid $15 to $25 per “loop” and are allowed to keep the tips they receive, which can be generous.

“I just don’t know where you would find a better summer job,” said Matt McIntee, who oversees the Chicago operation of Troon, the company that manages the city’s Park District courses.

McIntee, who caddied as a kid himself and saw his own sons caddie all the way through college, emphasizes that the caddying experience is more than a job.

“It’s life skills,” he said. “The caddies learn how to interact with adults and expand their vision of the world beyond the sometimes-difficult neighborhoods where they live.”

Still, it’s also a job, which often are in short supply for young people.

Illinois PGA professional Juan Espejo sets high standards for the young boys and girls he teaches to be caddies.

“This is a first-time job for many of these kids,” observed Chicago golf’s ubiquitous Juan Espejo, a PGA professional who conducts the actual caddie training sessions. “Employment is where it’s at.”

When I told Espejo I’d heard him described as the pied piper of youth golf in Chicago, he hastened to add: “in nontraditional populations.”

The Columbus caddie program is a collaboration between Troon, Espejo’s Maryville Golf Academy and BUILD Inc., a West Side youth development organization. It is supported by a $15,000 grant from the Chicago District Golf Association (CDGA) Foundation that is used to pay the caddies and supply basic gear like caddie bibs.

BUILD Inc. helps recruit the caddie candidates and maintains communication with them and their families.

“We have a lot of young people who are interested and qualified to do this work,” said Sarah Loffman, BUILD’s director of enrichment. What they lack, she said, is the opportunity.

“They already come to us as fine young individuals,” Loffman stressed, putting to rest any notion of troubled kids.

Back for his third season of caddying is one such individual, David Jonathan Williams, 18, from Christ the King High School.

I met the poised and self-possessed Williams as he joined Espejo to help mentor would-be caddies during a cool late April training session.

Williams said caddying had given him a new perspective and that just coming to the course made him feel “rejuvenated.” He also said it had allowed him to “meet people you wouldn’t expect,” including a WGN producer who has since been mentoring him.

Later, I spoke with a golfer, Shayon Harris, 57, a Columbus regular who said he requests Williams as his caddie if he’s at the course that day. Harris said he enjoys talking to all the caddies and challenging them to think more deeply about the golf at hand – and their futures.

Caddies at Columbus Park GC.

Before the caddies get out on the course, though, they have to pass muster with Espejo, who balances the carrot with the stick to better prepare them.

As he paired caddie trainees with the volunteer golfers joining him for the practice session, Espejo told the kids to familiarize themselves with the golf bag and clubs they would be carrying.

“Count ‘em, clean ‘em, rack ‘em. Zip the zippers. Adjust the straps,” Espejo barked.

Over the course of the next few hours, he gave instruction in cleaning a golf ball, tracking it off the tee, where to stand on the tee, how to pull the flagstick without stepping in a golfer’s putting line, even the differences in clubs because some newbies don’t know a driver from a putter. As for the putter, he instructed: “Hand it to me as if you’re a nurse handing a surgeon a scalpel.”

When his ball landed in a bunker and the closest rake was in another bunker, Espejo told the caddie: “Run! I mean, run! Show me run!” Then, after demonstrating his raking technique, he handed the rake back. “Push and lift. I don’t want to see any grooves.”

When I suggested he’s a taskmaster, Espejo explained: “If we get the standards up, more people here will take caddies.”

Meanwhile, a young caddie receiving some of his pointed instruction, graduating 8th grader Ahbrielle, shrugs it off: “I like constructive criticism. I don’t want people sugarcoating things.”

As it is, nearly everyone at Columbus who is offered a caddie accepts, says Raja Abderrahim, who serves as caddie master, pairing golfers with caddies. Golfers aren’t charged for using a caddie but are encouraged to tip—and they do, he said.

To create more opportunities, the caddie program was expanded this summer to 15 kids from 10 in 2025. Espejo tells his pupils they are making history as the vanguard of a program that could span Columbus’ next century.

Mark Brown is a retired Chicago Sun-Times columnist.

Pro Jock He’s Not
Caddying not as simple as it looks. As a much younger man, this writer got a chance to caddie for a buddy in a PGA pro-am at the Quad Cities Open (now the John Deere Classic) in the early 1980s at Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley, Illinois. It was a much, much more daunting experience than I’d expected.

Having played my share of golf but never caddied, it seemed a simple enough task: carry his bag, clean the mud off his clubs and ball, replace the divots. When we got out on the course, though, I realized how much I didn’t know. Where should I stand? When should I speak, if at all?

I was too scared to even step on the greens. The professional caddie working with the PGA Tour pro in our group ended up handling all the flagstick duties.

What I needed was Maryville Golf Academy Juan Espejo’s caddie training manual, which he quickly offered with a promise to quiz me later.

“Walk alongside or slightly ahead of your player. Reach the ball ahead of him. Never lag behind,” states one pointer. Not sure I knew that.

“The first caddie on the green will attend the flagstick,” states another. That would have been good to know.

“Don’t spend time hunting balls with the hope of finding one that you can sell.” Even I’m not that dumb.
—Mark Brown