



ARDMORE, Pa. – LaRue Temple doesn't have an easy life. A typical day can include caddying here at Merion Golf Club starting at 7 a.m., then getting off work at 3 p.m. and going into Philadelphia to bartend until 2 a.m. Sometimes he DJs on the weekends. There have been days when he does all three.



This was supposed to be a week off for Temple. The U.S. Open was in town, and Temple had tickets. He would hang out with his mom, relax in the grandstand, and cheer for Tiger Woods.

Then, in the wind and wet of a wicked Monday afternoon, something marvelous happened.

Temple, who went to high school locally and attended Philadelphia Community College, was wandering around in the Merion parking lot, waiting for a chance to go watch some golf, when a car pulled up.

A teenager named Michael Kim, a student at Cal, needed a caddie for the U.S. Open. This was not a big-dollar gig. Kim is an amateur. Even if he won the whole blasted tournament, he couldn't take a dime.

Not that a 19-year-old was about to contend for the U.S. Open.

Unless he did.

Kim and Temple got along great, and the boy wonder, who earned college player of the year honors, actually made the cut.

Temple was excited, but he had been in cool settings before. He's looped for celebrities like Samuel Jackson and Dr. J. He used to be a Phillies batboy, and he spent a lot of his childhood at Veterans Stadium getting autographs of stars like Ken Griffey, Jr. This wasn't a huge deal … yet.

Saturday came and crowds mostly gravitated to the guy Temple wanted to see: Tiger. Kim and his caddie walked around Merion to polite claps and the occasional shout-out from a friend.

Not a friend of Kim's; a friend of Temple's.

"LaRuuuuuuuueeeee!!!" they heard again and again.

Temple laughed. Kim did too. "You're more popular than me!" Kim said.

That was about to change. Kim suddenly caught fire on a course that had doused the hopes of professionals more than twice his age, including Tiger. Birdie, birdie, birdie. Fans across the country noticed Kim's name appear on their TV screens, with a lower-case a for amateur reminding them that this was no ordinary player and he was not allowed to take the extraordinary prize money he was lining up to win.

Temple's Facebook feed exploded, though of course he had no idea, since he was on the course, trying not to notice the cameras suddenly pointed at him and his new friend.

He thought to himself about all the times he silently made fun of golfers at Merion who took way too long to size up a putt. "This isn't the U.S. Open," he would think.

"Except this is the U.S. Open!" he realized.

The ropeline buzzed as Kim and Temple lumbered along. "He's my age," 19-year-old Drew Calamaro said of Kim. "Ridiculous."

"He's so skinny," joked another fan.

"He can't be 120 lbs.," said another.

(Kim is 148 pounds, "on a good day," he says. Temple is … more than 148 lbs.)

The scene bordered on adorable, with the willowy Cal kid looking constantly to the burly Philly man, asking for lines and checking for yardages. Temple reassured him, with a nod or a word or some praise, and the two carried on with small talk and fist-bumps.

"He's the show," Temple said.

But really, they both were. On the 16th, Kim pulled his drive left and found an enormous tree blocking his view to the green. He and Temple walked out to the fairway to see around the obstacle, then walked back, figuring out what to do. Kim took out an iron and tucked it behind his ball. Fans at the scene marveled as they realized: The kid was going to blast it through the tree.

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