Decision time for Shelly Odom comes as he stands at the third tee at Twin Brooks Golf Course in St. Petersburg.

Although a hole on the par-3 public course provides less angst than a 450-yard par-5 at a country club, the question remains: Sand wedge or pitching wedge?

Twice Odom picks up some grass from the ground and releases it, watching the way the wind blows. He glances back at the yardage sign, which reads 120, to see the distance between him and the hole.

"I'm guessing now," says Odom. "I don't know if that yardage sign is right, either."

Had it been 50 years ago, Odom might have been able to ask a caddie, whose years of hauling clubs down each fairway made him an indispensable source of inside information. It's the job that Odom, 63, once held as a teenager at what is now the St. Petersburg Country Club.

Today, all he has at Twin Brooks is me, awkwardly holding his clubs and staring at him.

Just as cobblestones gave way to paved streets and iceboxes to refrigerators, caddies lost out long ago to the battery-operated golf cart. Some carts now come bleeping and blinking, outfitted with the latest in global positioning systems, while caddies are left with their memories of the game.

Both technology and economic pressures contributed to a sharp decrease in the number of caddies starting in the 1950s. A survey conducted by the Western Golf Association, a national caddie advocacy group, showed that the number of carts grew 160 percent between 1952 and 1953 and then another 101 percent the next year.

The number of programs at most Tampa Bay-area courses has dwindled over time. Only Old Memorial Golf Club, an exclusive club in Tampa started in 1997 by the founders of the Outback Steakhouse chain, has year-round, mandatory caddying.

Belleair Country Club in Clearwater had around 100 caddies in 1962. Today, it has 16 in a part-time program. Twin Brooks, as much a function of its small size as anything else, has never employed caddies.

Odom is the only player on the course in the 90-degree heat on a recent Saturday afternoon. He carries with him a brown towel to mop his sweat, although sometimes water droplets escape down his nose. The heat does not slow him down. At 22, it seems like I'm the one struggling to keep up with him.

We're here because I've asked Odom to show me how to caddie. From the first hole, he starts teaching me his secrets.

"Always put the clubs on the side of the next shot," he says, pointing to a spot 20 yards in front of where he is preparing to take his second shot. "That way, you don't have to walk backwards."

He makes a compass on the ground in front of his feet to describe where the caddie should stand in relation to the golfer.

"When he is shooting," Odom says, "never stand in the north-south line of sight, and never stand behind him."

"And don't move."

Making his mark

Odom's advice is etched into his body. Under a polo shirt adorned with a monogrammed golf bag, Odom still has scars on his shoulders acquired from years of lugging around the links for 36 holes. At times, he says, golfer's bags were not only loaded with a set of clubs, but also two or three pairs of shoes along with glasses and quart bottles of liquor.

Odom started caddying when he was 16, earning a buck while playing hooky. Usually, though, he would lose most of that money in card games with other caddies.

He remembers scrambling up palmetto trees, scanning for errant balls that had lodged themselves in the crooks between branches.

For three years, he caddied for former pro Bobby Nichols when the PGA Tour came to town. Once, Odom said, he carried the bag of Gary Player when Player's usual caddie was unavailable. Another time, he shagged balls for Sam Snead, like Player a World Golf Hall of Famer, who showed Odom how to put spin on his shots.

It was a job many people wanted. A 1944 job aptitude survey published in the American Journal of Psychology ranked caddying at a public golf course as the 18th most preferred profession out of 55 choices.

And as golf courses were slow to integrate, caddying also allowed black people, like Odom, the chance to play. Often, caddies had course privileges, and spent their time shooting rounds after hours.

Odom smiles as he thinks back on his earliest days on the course.

"You're taking me back to when I was a June bug," he says.

By now we're at the fifth hole.

A dying breed

What killed the profession of Odom's youth was money.

When golfers hire caddies, courses earn nothing. The caddies are independent contractors. When golfers rent golf carts, courses typically earn a fee of $20 to $35 per person, per round.

Hiring a caddie is also more expensive for the golfer, especially when factoring in tips.

Money has even played a role in altering the basic scale of American golf courses, making many of them better suited to motorized transport. Courses today are frequently built in conjunction with development of new luxury homes. To maximize the number of course-front lots, developers can create large distances between holes.

Walking, especially with pounds of clubs on your back, is often impractical.

In Florida, the heat was another strike against caddying, while the threat of lightning adds to the cart's appeal as a possible escape route.

But certainly, vestiges of traditional caddying remain.

At Belleair Country Club, which brought back a slimmed-down caddying program from last fall through May, caddies earned $24 per bag, per round, plus a tip. Like Odom, the caddies were in their teens and were attracted by the possibility of free use of the course.

"Caddying is kind of cool, but I really liked the fact I could use the range facilities," said Michael Myregaard, 16, a caddie at Belleair and golfer at Clearwater Central Catholic High. "The money is not really a factor, but mainly for practice purposes it was great."

Still, programs like Belleair's are the exception rather than the rule. In Florida as in other parts of the country, the biggest consideration for golf course owners has been the bottom line.

"When you're talking about your normal courses, they survive based on the revenue they generate," said Tom Zaras, a tournament director at the Florida State Golf Association. "The bulk of that revenue will come from cart fees. ... While many places allow walking, they're not going to want you to do it."

Golfer for life

As caddying fell by the wayside of American golf, Odom came of age, built a life and found other jobs. At times he was just too busy to play golf - but it was always in the back of his mind.

Odom was a boxer for a while, learning the skill after taking teasing for his name, Shelly. He went on to see combat in Vietnam. He was a meter reader for Florida Power. He's retired now, but he works three days a week in an air-conditioning and refrigeration warehouse. Over the years, Odom has been married and divorced four times.

"Some women aren't happy when you go out golfing all the time," he says. "They say that you love golf more than you love them."

In his 30s, Odom returned to the sport, coaxed by seeing friends from the old times on the links.

Today, he lives a few blocks from Twin Brooks. He spends much of his days at courses or at a field near Lake Maggiore, playing or driving balls.

And despite his experience, Odom says he's still working to improve. He bemoans his lack of finesse on short shots. He says our Saturday walk through Twin Brooks will be good practice for a skins match he's scheduled for the next day.

Back at the third tee, Odom reaches a decision on which club to use. Hedging his bet, he first uses the pitching wedge and the ball soars left, past the green. Then, he drops another ball on the ground and tries out the sand wedge. This shot is considerably closer.

"Yeah," he says, "the sand wedge is the club."

"If you had been a caddie here, would you have known that beforehand?" I ask him.

"Oh, yeah," he says. "It'd be my job."

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