The caddies work six days a week, assigned at “the bench” above Sankaty’s parking lot. Carrying one bag — a tank in camp parlance — nets $70, in addition to a tip that averages about $20. In the evenings, caddies are allowed to play the 6,670-yard course, which Golfweek magazine ranked this year among the top 100 classic, or pre-1960, courses nationwide.  Most of the campers are golfers. (One prominent alumnus is George Zahringer, a top senior amateur.) About half are from Massachusetts. Because most return, only 10 to 15 spots are open each year to the 100 or so applicants.  About a dozen boys are from poor families. Sankaty has hosted boys whose prior camp was juvenile hall. Room and board is $5 a day, but the fee is returned at summer’s end to those in need.  Money management is a cornerstone of the camp. Each evening, the caddies deposit their tips and record their loops — the number of times around 18 holes. A typed list of campers and their earnings is posted on a wall of the mailroom, a section of the dining hall that doubles as a bank. Most campers earn about $3,500 over the summer, but the best caddies earn as much as $9,000.  During the last week of camp, boys who have submitted essays and applications learn if they will receive any of the roughly $110,000 in scholarships to prep schools and colleges. Club members subsidize the camp and contribute to scholarships, and campers and employees cite myriad examples of quieter generosity.  Last summer, a member paid a tutor to hold College Board test-prep classes in the camp library; about 20 boys signed up. Boys said that David Hulme, a Sankaty member who owns an Ohio restaurant, flies in steaks for the annual beach party. Members have been known to give college-bound caddies substantial money for school, as well as contact information in case they ever want help getting a job, campers said.  But first-time campers can be daunted.  Colin Sullivan, this summer’s caddie master, first came to Camp Sankaty at 14, albeit reluctantly; his parents wanted him to get scholarship money. Now 22, he is a staff member.  “I remember being a skinny little kid barely able to carry a bag and looking at the bigger kids thinking, Oh, no, but I grew to love it,” Sullivan, of Andover, Mass., said.  In 2007, he was named Honor Circle Chief, awarded to a boy of sterling character. The recipient sits with the adult members during the awards dinner, and perhaps best of all, his name is engraved on a plaque in the Bolling Library, a shingled hut with books, a long table and an eight-track player.  About 50 former campers, ages 21 to 70, return the second week in June to open the camp, clean cabins and barbecue. Before 1995, campers slept in Quonset huts. Today, the camp hosts thrice-weekly contests in touch football, basketball, chess and, of course, golf. There is wireless Internet service and a high-definition television, courtesy of the camp’s alumni.  Camp Sankaty has most everything that a teenage boy desires. Except girls.  The boys are granted “liberty” in Siasconset or eight miles away in downtown Nantucket. Failure to return before dinner or 10:45 on Saturday night results in the loss of work or privileges.  Has anyone tried to sneak a girl into camp?  “There are legendary stories about attempts but no successes,” said Nick Riccardella of Cliffside Park, N.J., a former camper and now its assistant director.  Despite Sankaty’s summer-house-chic clubhouse and the Princeton stickers on vintage sports cars, members and employees say the club represents the year-round and summer populations of Nantucket.  “The membership is so diverse,” Sullivan said. “You find a C.E.O. having a beer at the bar with the local garbage man.”  To maintain it, full golf members pay $5,000 in annual fees. The initiation fee is about $40,000.  By contrast, it costs more than $350,000 to join the Nantucket Golf Club, where the caddies are largely grown men who wear traditional white jumpsuits.  The tips are better over there, from what the Sankaty caddies hear, but the Nantucket course has no housing. Or playful nicknames. (Two campers last year were known as Glaucoma and Muscle Milk.) Or eight-track tapes. (“Just two: Burt Bacharach and ‘The Blues Brothers’ soundtrack,” said the program director James Herron, a former camper. “Defines summer.”)  Ian McCormick, 19, of Northampton, Mass., said, “I could caddie at a thousand other places.” He has been at Sankaty since he was 13.  “It’s not bad to live on Nantucket for $5 a day,” McCormick added. “But I’ve got to say it’s the people who make me want to come back. I can live, work, play golf in a beautiful place. That’s a pretty good deal.”  The goal of Camp Sankaty, according to its board, is to “develop productive citizens in the personal and business world.”  Doug Ellsworth, 70, a former director of the camp, said the campers live in “a giant sociogram” of differences but are treated the same.  “And the game of golf in itself teaches boys how to be quiet and respectful, and how to control your temper,” Ellsworth said.
Since 1930, Camp Sankaty Head, one of the nation’s last caddie camps, has been molding young men from places as far flung as Washington Heights and Ireland.