The Dunvegan myths and the purple acrylic

A sporting event takes place next week of incalculable significance to me, but, unless you happen to be a fellow Dunvegan Dribbler, weighty for you only in its meaninglessness.

The Dunvegan Dribblers was the Sunday League football team I helped to found back in 1983, my second year at the University of St Andrews. The team was named after the Dunvegan Hotel, the pub my friends and I frequented twice, sometimes three times a day. It still stands, proudly, about eight-iron distance from the Royal and Ancient clubhouse, only these days the licensees pretty much eschew the student trade and set out their stall to attract visiting golfers, doubtless for sound commercial reasons.

Caddies are welcome, though, despite being even more inclined than students to get horribly pissed. Arnold Palmer's former caddie Tip Anderson, a sadly frail shadow of his former self, still shuffles into the Dunvegan on a regular basis, and no self-respecting barmaid ever takes his order. It's always the same: a half-pint of Eighty Shillings beer with a rum and water on the side.

Tip won the Open Championship twice with Palmer, and in 1964, when the great man missed the Open at St Andrews and recommended his faithful caddie to his friend Tony Lema, Tip went and won it with Lema. No caddie has ever known the treacherous pot bunkers and fiendish double greens of the Old Course better than old Tip, who chose to stay in Fife even when Palmer offered him lucrative employment in America. He claims he was nervous about flying, although those who know him best reckon it was more to do with the responsibilities he felt to his children, Mrs Tip having upped and left one grey St Andrews morning.

Anecdotes surround Tip like determined Scottish midges, although my two favourite St Andrews caddie stories have nothing to do with him. One concerns another character who used to drink in the Dunvegan, a weaselly-looking fellow named Hughie who, when drunk, i.e. most evenings, would return to his house up the road in Guardbridge, haul out his shotgun, and from his upstairs window take pot-shots at passing cars. A large American once hired him for the day, introducing himself as Big Chuck from Cincinnati. Hughie was not to be outdone. "And I'm Shotgun Hughie from Guardbridge," he said.

The other story might be apocryphal, although I have heard at least one caddie vouch for the truth of it. Like all the best caddie stories, it involves an American visitor, in this instance a man whose golf was a tad worse than abysmal.

Overwhelmed by the aura of the Old Course, for 17 holes he kept jerking his head up to see where his ball had gone, and consequently kept topping it dismally. On the 18th tee he topped his drive straight into the Swilcan Burn, and only half-jokingly told the caddie to throw the clubs into the burn as well. "In fact," he added, "I might as well throw myself in and drown myself." The caddie, who all the way round, thinking of his forthcoming tip, had offered nothing but words of encouragement, looked him unsmilingly in the eye. "Ye'll nae manage to droon yeself," he said. "Ye'll nae keep your heed doon long enough."

My friend Davey, one of the poorest golfers ever to hack a zig-zagging course from tee (eventually) to green, has on occasional corporate golf days hired a caddie, and is hilarious on the subject. "Now sir," says the caddie on the first tee, before Davey's incompetence has been unveiled. "You need to send the ball down the right with a wee bit of draw. If you catch it well you could reach those 250-yard bunkers." "Right-ho," says Davey, and then, with a dull thwack, sends the ball skidding 12 yards into a gorse bush. "Oh bad luck," says the caddie, the awful truth beginning to dawn. "Play another ball, sir, and don't forget, down the right with a bit of draw." "Understood," says Davey, and with a terrible swish, misses it altogether.

Davey is another for whom next week's sporting event looms large. Those who used to squeeze with pride into the purple acrylic kit of the Dunvegan Dribblers (dancing down the right wing with what I thought was a certain elegance, I was once unkindly told that I resembled an aubergine) are now too decrepit to play football, but every year 16 or so of us gather for a 36-hole golf tournament over one of Britain's best courses.

We play for a handsome trophy, carefully inscribed with the names of previous winners going back to 1986, and take the entire business at least as seriously as Tiger Woods takes the Open Championship. Next week, it is the turn of Royal St George's, Sandwich, to host the Dunvegan Dribblers, now restyled the Old Dribblonians. And if I win – repeating my solitary triumph at Royal Dornoch in 1992 (by a single shot from Chris Barry, since you ask) – then have no fear, you'll read all about it. In fact, I might have to ask for a bit more space.

b.viner@independent.co.uk