It is what he always wanted, a career in golf, going back to those days when he would slam golf balls around or through or into the confounding doglegs of a wonderland that shaped his life.

Dennis Pines Golf Club is where Mike Carbone felt not like a kid, but as a golfer, thanks to those warm faces in the pro shop and the welcome mat they put down. “No, you can play whenever you want to,” Jay Haberl and his wife, Carol, would tell Carbone and his friends, Brent Wanner and Kenny Lewis.

And when grown men who were the best players at “The Pines” – Kevin Carey, Joe Walker and Jimmy Horvath – showed up, it wasn’t to run the kids away; it was to sweep them into this mystical world.

Carbone couldn’t get enough of it. “Dennis Pines,” he said, “is in my blood forever.”

Golf, too, was going to be forever and the fact that he remains enveloped by it day after day is a testament to his passion. But he’s a caddie now and several years ago gave up the pursuit of his PGA Tour dream?

Ah, that is true, but were you to enlist the assessment of someone in tune with the golf landscape, you’d discover that Carbone has a rather enviable set of bookends to his life in golf: Seminole in Juno Beach, Fla., from November to mid-May, Old Sandwich GC in Plymouth the remaining four-plus months.

“Seminole is my favorite place on the planet. It’s been home for me for 17 years,” said Carbone, 40, “and I think it’s maybe the greatest membership in the country, maybe the world.”

And Old Sandwich affords Carbone to not only spend summers on his beloved Cape Cod with his wife of three years, Rebecca, but to work for golfers who live by a philosophy that is standard fare at Seminole.

“Every single golfer,” said Carbone, “comes in and checks his ego at the door.”

Never has Carbone felt let down by golf or considered this caddie business to be a disappointing consolation prize. He put all the building blocks in place – State Junior champ in 1998; named along with Sergio Garcia, Billy Haas, Brandt Snedeker, Sean O’Hair, and Hunter Mahan to the Rolex Junior All-America team; solid four-year career at URI – but “it’s all about playing well at the right time” and Carbone concedes that part of the puzzle never fell in place.

“I had a blast. I did. I could have done better, but I don’t have any regrets. To make the PGA Tour, you’re talking one percent of the one-percenters.”

When he got brought into the Seminole caddie yard in 2004, Carbone envisioned saving funds needed to chase summer minitours and prep for the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament in the fall.

But a funny thing happened. “The Seminole membership molds young men into pretty good adults,” said Carbone, who worked for a steady procession of passionate golfers who knew the game and treated a caddie with respect.

Michael Carbone has landed a steady loop with one of Seminole's newest members, Tom Brady.

Carbone had glimmers of the PGA Tour (he played in the 2006 Deutsche Bank Championship, the 2009 Turning Stone Resort Championship, and the 2012 Travelers Championship), and won locally (2009, 2017 Rhode Island Opens; 2011 Maine Open) but with every seven-month stretch at Seminole, the “Donald Ross genius” gripped him and the knowledge that he was surrounded by an unmatched golf culture was a dream come true.

He caddies regularly for Buddy Marucci, an icon of sorts in the world of amateur golf, and he will often loop for one of Seminole’s newest members, Tom Brady. There isn’t a day that goes by at Seminole that Carbone doesn’t attest to something that reinforces his love of golf, like watching Kelly Miller at 67 win the club championship.

“I mean, that was so cool. It’s throw-back stuff. But to watch the golfers who really appreciate Seminole and really know how to play the wind, well, you just need to be there,” he said.

What he needs, too, is to be in touch with his roots. A teammate from his state golf championship team at Nauset High School, Eric Dugas, is a professional and Carbone caddied for him in the Bermuda Open last year. Michael Sims, a URI teammate, keeps in touch. Carbone is also in synch with Jim Salinetti (head pro at Winchester CC) and Josh Hillman (head pro at Taconic).

And most of all, when he has days off, the pull of Dennis Pines is intoxicating, and it reminds him why he recently had his amateur status re-instated.

“The big reason I wanted to be an amateur again is to play for fun again. I remember Joe Walker; nobody knows where his golf ball is going like him. I remember Kevin Carey; he was in places where you couldn’t see him, then all of a sudden, out came an incredible shot.

“You just never know where the game is going to take you, but I love where I am, and now I want that again – to play and have fun.”