Words by Jenny Lynn Davis | Images by Al Blanton and courtesy of the Tidwell family
On a sweltering August day, Thomas Tidwell sits inside the clubhouse at Musgrove Country Club and looks back on a version of the course that exists now mostly in memory.
“Daylight and dark,” Tidwell says when asked how Musgrove today compares with the course he knew as a boy.
The current layout may leave him a little turned around, but the original nine holes are another matter.
“I still remember every tee, every green, the pars and birdies,” he says. “I still remember where they were.”
That memory stretches back more than seven decades, to when Tidwell was about 12 years old and followed his three older brothers to Musgrove to caddie. He had convinced his parents to let him tag along after growing tired of staying home by himself.
The first golfer whose bag he carried was Mr. Cranford.
“The first day I was over here, I caddied for that guy, and that just turned me on to it,” Tidwell says. “I just kept coming back.”
He kept coming until he was about 17, learning the game as he walked the course and watched the golfers whose clubs he carried.
Musgrove itself was already part of Walker County history. Its original log clubhouse was completed in 1924 by Col. L.B. Musgrove, and the property became Musgrove Country Club in 1932. In Tidwell’s caddying days, the course had nine holes; today it is an 18-hole course redesigned in 1992.
Back then, a day at the course meant walking. Caddies arrived early and waited for golfers to choose them. Between rounds, Tidwell and the other boys played football and wrestled around. Once the golfers arrived, though, Tidwell says, “we got pretty serious.”
For 18 holes, Tidwell earned 65 cents, plus a tip. A good day could bring his earnings to just over $3.
That money mattered.
“I was raised poor, and I never did see much money, so I really enjoyed it,” he says.
Most of what he earned went home to his parents, who were struggling financially. He kept a little for himself for candy and, he admits, the occasional cigarette.
He also took pride in being good at the job.
“I never did lose one of their balls,” Tidwell says. “When they knocked one out in the woods, I’d always find it.”
Along the way, caddying taught him more than how to follow a golf ball into the trees. Tidwell says he learned about being honest and getting along with people, lessons that followed him after high school as he worked at a feed mill, Fairway Golf Bag Company, and in the coal industry before retiring from Drummond Coal Company.
Golf followed him, too.
Tidwell continued playing for years, although when asked whether he considers himself a golfer, he offers a quick: “I pretend to be.”
More importantly, the game became something he passed down.
His son Randy Tidwell remembers his father taking him and his brother, Bruce, golfing when they were children, even when the boys were more interested in ponds, fish, and stray golf balls than the game itself.
“He still took us,” Randy says. “He still got us out on the course.”
Tidwell’s daughter, Pam Waldrop, has her own memories tied to those golf balls. She remembers Tidwell taking the children into the woods along the edge of the course with a gallon bucket to hunt for balls that had gone astray.
“It was like finding Easter eggs,” Pam says.
Randy says his father was patient with him and Bruce on the course and never hesitated to take them back, no matter how badly they might have behaved the time before. Over the years, that connection to the game continued through Tidwell’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Even after his playing days slowed, Musgrove continued drawing Tidwell back. He has returned through the years to play a round or, sometimes, simply to drive around the property without getting out of the car.
“It just brings back a lot of memories,” he says.
Now approaching his 85th birthday, Tidwell can look across a course that has changed dramatically since he first arrived with his brothers. Yet much of what he found there – golf, companionship, patience and the value of getting along with people – stayed with him.
Asked what he would tell that 12-year-old boy if he could meet him again on the course, Tidwell’s answer is fittingly simple.
“I’d tell him to learn how to play golf and get along with people.” WL
