Coming to a screen near you

Caddie's Role:As you descend over the winter scene of snow-capped mountains at Lake Tahoe and into the summer scene that glistens over the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, it is easy to see why southern California is such a popular place to live - sun, sea, sand and snow, and of course Hollywood.

LA is agog with aspiring actors parking cars and working bars, temporarily, until the right part in a movie presents itself.

I, naturally, was not in LA for a movie part, more a bit-part in the Nissan Open at the historic Riviera Club north of the Santa Monica district of LA. As it happened, Retief (Goosen) was making a TV commercial for his sponsor TaylorMade. They were shooting the piece last Monday, and somehow it was decided that instead of having a professional actor play my role as caddie I should play myself.

On the 11-hour flight from Dublin I had plenty of time to let my mind wander into a fictional movie set. I was, after all, heading to LA and felt entitled to dream of the big screen.

The director's assistant phoned on Sunday night to say the chauffeur would be at my hotel by 6.45 the next morning to take me to the set. Wide awake at 4am - due not to excitement but jet lag - I was still waiting anxiously outside my hotel at 7am. No town car driven by a man in a black hat was to be seen.

There had been a mistake. The driver had picked up the leading man, Retief, and forgot about the supporting actor, the bagman. One of the production team was staying close to my hotel and would pick me up in his rental car. The reality of my role in this "movie" was becoming apparent.

Mike, from the financial side of the production company, collected me and off we went at full LA speed, 40mph maximum on the San Diego freeway any time outside 3-5am. We cruised past Santa Monica Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. My imagination took me back to the movies; I had got over the missing town car.

We arrived at the country club where the ad was being shot. I had expected a handful of people to be on the production team. Not so. This ad had the infrastructure of a movie set. There were articulated trucks, trailers, three catering vans, dressing-rooms, toilets and, of course, film equipment everywhere.

Annie from make-up and hair greeted me, Julia from wardrobe suggested what shirt I should wear and Raul from catering brought me an excellent cup of coffee to sip as I was being dressed for my part. There were up to 70 people involved in this crew, from camera technicians to caterers; this really was big-time.

Once made up, Retief and I were escorted to the elevated set, the seventh tee.The tee was surrounded by professional extras. There were about 60 men and women representing the average group of spectators at a tournament. This is what these people do for a living. Some of them had worked with the assistant director for over 10 years.

The director introduced himself. A tall, well-built middle-aged man with an American Indian look to him, he shook my hand and began to explain through gesticulations the "plot" of the commercial.

The gist of it was that this new TaylorMade Burner driver was going to take the wimp out of Retief's game and inspire him to whack his tee-shot on to the dog-leg par-four green with this supersonic driver.

As supporting actor, I was to then rip the head-cover off and hand my heroic boss his new Corza putter after his tee-shot comes to rest on the green. Simple.

Kenka propped himself in his director's chair and, surrounded by six assistants at his screen, called "roll, and action", and off we went. The whole scene was to take about 20 seconds. We had started at 8am. By mid morning we were still "acting". That was only for the wide scenes, the close-ups were to follow.

Southern California can be quite fresh in the morning. Between takes, Julia was on hand to drape a jacket over my shoulders to protect me from the morning chill. I was dreaming of Hollywood again, so I let myself enjoy the pampering. The yogurt parfait they served was raspberry and not strawberry as requested. I decided it might have seemed a tad fussy to send it back, so I made the most of the raspberry-flavoured one.

The Riviera Club has hosted most of the golfing Hollywood stars over the years. The clubhouse walls are lined with black-and-white photographs of Spencer Tracy, Audrey Hepburn, Bing Crosby and Dean Martin, to name but a few. I glanced at the spectators beside the 18th on Friday last and noticed Dennis Hopper. In the pro-am we were fortunate to be paired with the charming Jerry Weintraub, one of Hollywood's biggest producers.

I returned to my real bit-part on the other side of Retief's bag last Tuesday, where there was no Julia to carry my jacket and a parfait of any flavour would have been graciously accepted.