Florian Fritsch retains Tour card without one air mile

While Padraig Harrington was winning his first European Tour title since 2008 in the Portugal Masters, Germany's Florian Fritsch was achieving something equally impressive.

Fritsch could only finish 44th in Vilamoura, but that was enough to ensure he would retain his full playing privileges for next season, despite playing in just 12 events.

The 30-year-old’s limited schedule is due to a fear of flying, but three seventh-place finishes — including the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship — in his last six events saw Fritsch end the season 101st on the Race to Dubai, sandwiched between Oliver Fisher and Pelle Edberg, who each played 30 times.

“I used to not mind flying, it was just a normal thing like taking a cab,” Fritsch explained. “But in 2005 I was flying from Frankfurt to Turin and the plane suddenly started rocking all over the place and my coach turned to me and said ‘If it goes wrong, it will be over with quickly’.

“From that moment I began thinking a lot about flying and it developed from an awareness to an interest, to scepticism, to fear. I flew a few times more but in 2010 I was in Zurich on the way to an event in Kenya and I decided I couldn’t do it any more.

“I called my management company, told them I was quitting professional golf and took a train back home. As fate would have it, I met my wife that week in Germany.

“Amazingly, I spent a year with a regular job and then went out and got my Tour card. It sort of made me mad in a way. You spend all this time trying to be a pro and grinding and then you take a year off, barely practice and get through Q-School. This game is messed up. That’s golf I guess.”

With the European Tour visiting South Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Malaysia, Thailand, India and China in the early part of the season, Fritsch did not make his first start until May in Morocco.

From there his schedule depends upon which events he can reasonably get to by driving, which includes the journey from the British Masters on the outskirts of London to Vilamoura.

“To give you an example of how I travel, I do around 25,000 miles a year in my car,” Fritsch wrote in a blog on the European Tour website.

“To get here to Portugal I left London on Sunday night after the tournament, drove to Portsmouth and got on a ferry at 10.30pm that got into Bilbao in Spain on Tuesday at 7.45am.

“I then drove for 10 hours to get to Vilamoura. It sounds like a lot of driving but I love it. I get to see so much of Europe and because I’m into history, if I pass something interesting I always pull over and check it out.”