What a 36-hole day on Bandon Trails looks like for a Bandon Dunes caddie

GOLF.com spent a long weekend shadowing two caddies at Bandon Dunes, and the 15-minute video it posted this week is a good look at the job from the other side of the bag. GOLF's Josh Sens tags along with longtime loopers Graham Banks and Jason Castles, from their morning routines on the Oregon coast to the end of the night at the Arcade Tavern in town.

Who's carrying the bag

Banks says in the video that he has worked at the resort for 18 years. Castles says he has been there 16, and that he hated it his first season. He's from Arizona and found it cold. He came back a second year, then a third, and by then he was hooked. "This is my home away from home," he says.

One caddie in the video puts the caddie roster at somewhere between 500 and 600. GOLF.com's accompanying story says the corps swells beyond 500 in peak season, at a resort that started with one course in 1999 and now has five 18-hole courses and two par-3 layouts. Late in the video, another caddie says the five courses each do 120 to 200 rounds a day, and that there were 900 rounds out there on the day they filmed. Treat those as caddie estimates; the resort doesn't give a count in the video.

The day itself

The filmed day was 36 holes, with Bandon Trails in the morning and again in the afternoon. One of the caddies walks the route through the course: it starts in the dunes, moves into a meadow, then finishes in a forest on the other side of a ridge. He calls the 11th his favorite hole on the property and notes that it has the only water hazard in play on the course. The short par-4 14th, he says, is one of the most argued-over holes on site.

Most of the job, as the caddies describe it, is reading people. One of them says a big part of the work is figuring out what a player wants and what they actually need, then adjusting every round instead of treating each day the same. Wind is the other constant. You hear them working through carry numbers and club choices as the wind shifts. As one of them puts it, "you can't get that from a range finder." Bandon's caddies are independent contractors working for the player, according to both the video and GOLF.com, and caddies aren't required at the resort.

After the loop

The night ends at the Arcade Tavern. The bar's owner says in the video, "We bought the Arcade Tavern in 2010," and that there has been an Arcade Tavern in Bandon since about 1900. A caddie introduced there as Christopher Knight says he has worked at the resort for 22 years. Another caddie shows off a photo from his wedding 12 years ago, with a group of caddies in it.

Worth your time if

You're planning a Bandon trip, or you've only played it on a simulator and want to see how the ground and wind work there in person. GOLF.com says the resort routinely books out more than a year ahead, so if a caddie-walked 36 is on your list, start early. The full video is above.