Caddies in Ireland: When to Take One and What They Actually Do

Reading time: 5 minutes

The single question that comes up more often than any other in the week before an Irish golf trip is whether to take a caddie. The honest short answer is that taking a caddie improves the experience meaningfully enough that the cost question quickly stops feeling like the right way to frame the decision. The longer answer, which is what this piece is about, is the practical one: what an Irish caddie actually does, what it costs, what to tip, and the small details around booking that, if you get them right, deliver one of the more memorable parts of the round.

Forecaddie or Full Caddie: The Distinction That Actually Matters

The two terms get used interchangeably in tour operator brochures, and they should not be. A full caddie carries your bag, a single caddie carries one bag, a double caddie carries two, and walks the full eighteen holes with the player. A forecaddie walks ahead of the group, spots the tee shots from a vantage point ahead of the landing area, reads greens, gives yardages, and rakes bunkers, but does not carry a bag. A forecaddie typically works for the whole group of two, three, or four players rather than for an individual.

The choice between the two is largely a function of what you want from the round. A single caddie, walking with you for four hours and carrying your bag, is the classic British Isles caddie experience, it gives you a quieter round, a closer working partnership on club selection and line reads, and the conversation, which is for many travelling golfers the most memorable single element of their trip. A forecaddie shared among the four-ball is more efficient on price and pace, and is the right answer for groups using carts (where bag-carrying is irrelevant) and for groups who want the local knowledge without the one-on-one dynamic. At several clubs, Lahinch is the clearest example, the club's preferred default for visitor groups is a forecaddie per group, with single caddies available on request.

What an Irish Caddie Actually Does

The job is more than carrying the bag. An experienced Irish links caddie does, in the course of an average eighteen holes, the following: gives you the yardage from your ball to the front and back of the green; recommends a club; reads the wind (which on a links course matters as much as the yardage, and is harder for a visiting golfer to read accurately); advises on which side of the fairway is the safer miss before each tee shot; reads the line, speed, and borrow on every green (though the Rules require the player to align themselves); rakes the bunkers; keeps your clubs clean; and, in the quiet moments between shots, tells you the small stories about the course that you will repeat for years.

The last part is undervalued. The marquee Irish caddies are, by and large, men (and increasingly women) who have caddied on the same course for a working career, many of them since their teens. The Lahinch caddies grew up in Lahinch; the Royal County Down caddies are part of the Newcastle community; the Ballybunion caddies have looped the Old Course for several thousand rounds each. They know the history of the course hole by hole. The line reads and the club selections are valuable; the round-long conversation is what most travelling golfers come home talking about.

What It Costs in 2026

The typical band is around €70 to €100 per bag for a single caddie, plus tip. Forecaddie pricing varies by club but tends to sit around €100 to €140 for the group. Marquee clubs sit at the upper end: at Royal County Down, for example, a senior caddie is around £75 and a forecaddie (the minimum requirement per group) around £110, paid in cash at the end of the round.

A gratuity on top is customary, and is paid in cash, in local currency, euros at any club in the Republic of Ireland, sterling at any club in Northern Ireland, directly to the caddie at the end of the round, not added to the club account or settled through the pro shop. A common floor is around €20 to €30 per bag for good service, more for an exceptional loop or a long day. Most caddies do not carry change, so it is worth having the cash before the round.

Pre-Booking: Worth Doing

At every marquee Irish club, caddies should be pre-booked at the time the tee time is confirmed. The marquee club caddie programmes run on a roster system, and walk-up requests on a busy summer Saturday will sometimes not be filled. Pre-booking guarantees that a caddie will be assigned, gives the club's caddie master the opportunity to match the caddie to the player, and removes one source of avoidable delay at the first tee. The cost of pre-booking is no different from booking on the day; the difference is in certainty and in caddie-player fit.

The Round With the Caddie, and the Round Without

It is possible to play most Irish links, except some with explicit caddie requirements, without a caddie. The marquee courses provide good yardage books, the greens are readable once the linksland is understood, and the wind, on the days when it cooperates, is figurable from the flags. A trolley is available at every club; a buggy is available at most clubs to golfers with a medical certificate, though buggies are restricted to cart paths at several of the marquee links and the experience suffers correspondingly.

But the round with a caddie, on a course where the caddie has looped many times, is the round most travelling golfers come back to in conversation. The line reads on Royal County Down's blind tee shots, the wind notes on Lahinch's exposed back nine, the stories on Ballybunion's opening holes, these arrive in the round through the caddie, and they do not arrive any other way. For a one-off trip to a course you may never play again, the caddie is often the difference between a round you remember the score of and a round you remember the day of.

Argyle Links plans Irish golf trips end to end, we arrange tee-time requests at the marquee clubs and build itineraries around confirmed access, coordinate accommodation across heritage hotels and championship resorts, and arrange chauffeured transfers between airports and courses. We coordinate caddy bookings at the time of itinerary confirmation. See our itineraries at argylelinks.com.