Dealing with all the travelling a vital part of the global game

I have just come back from an epic round the world trip with stops in New Orleans and Jakarta, Indonesia. They are not two destinations that spring to mind immediately when it comes to international professional golf but they do represent the extremes that golfers go to in order to ply their trade.

New Orleans would be known on the US Tour as an off-roader from the predictable mainstream of more traditional east or west coast destinations. There is a real sense of being somewhere different, it’s a city with an edge to it. An early morning stroll down the ignominious Bourbon St left me with a lasting impression of decadence and sloth. The street evoked an image of what a city street would look like in medieval times such was the amount of rubbish and accompanying stench strewn the length and depth of it.

I was in search of a launderette which I had been informed was in the most unlikely location imaginable towards the end of Bourbon St. The Wishing Well was a throwback to another era with its creaking old washing machines, extractors, and industrial sized presses that were in stark pristine contrast to the detritus that was Bourbon St at 7.30am on a Saturday morning.

The course, some 15 miles west of the city, TPC Louisiana is a low lying terrain that wouldn’t take much rain for it to swell up and leave just a hint of a golf course in a region known as the basin of America. The resident alligators look inherently aware of their established right of habitat with a 20 foot three legged gator regularly causing added concern on the already extremely difficult sixth hole by limping menacingly across the fairway throughout the week of the tournament.

With thunder forecast for the afternoon of the final round we ended up teeing off very early on Sunday which wasn't the best preparation for the start of a marathon trip. It included 21 hours of flying and countless hours of connecting to finally arrive in the Indonesian capital on the island of Java on Tuesday afternoon.

At a standstill
After a surprisingly swift passage through Jakarta's Soekarna-Hatta international airport with the help of the tournament organisers we immediately got jammed straight into the city's stationary traffic. This was how the traffic was at 2pm in the afternoon, it wasn't even rush hour and we were at a standstill.

When we took off from the terminal and a police out-rider swept in front of us, in our foreign innocence, it seemed a little excessive. We understood that the Indonesian Masters event wanted to make a fuss about their star, invited current Open Champion, Ernie Els, but surely it wasn't necessary for a police escort.

An hour later, bumper to bumper and more than a little disoriented we clearly understood the need for assistance on a toll road that took on the appearance of a south-east Asian car park.

Stark contrast
The contrast between an Asian Tour event and the prestigious US PGA Tour is stark, even in comparison to a run of the mill event like the Zurich Classic. Apart from playing for about eight times the money in America there is the logistical battle of simple day-to-day survival. The hotels are not particularly cheap for the Asian competitors so if they don't stay in the official hotel they have the difficulty of trying to get to the golf course, on time. The course was less than 15 kilometres from the official city centre hotel. On Thursday afternoon it took the players two and a quarter hours to get back from the course and that was with a police escort and jumping off the bus in the vicinity of the hotel and walking the final part in order to avoid another half hour delay.

The heat in Jakarta can only be described as sauna-like with players looking like they had just stepped out of the shower on their way back to the clubhouse, when they had simply been warming up on the range for 20 minutes.

We played with the relatively young Austrian Berndt Wiesberger, who ended up beating Ernie by a shot. The Austrian, having won already in Asia on the European Tour, has now added an Asian Tour victory to his credit and gained a new experience of a prestigious victory over the reigning Open Champion.

You never know quite where you will end up in the global game of golf but wherever the destination you can be sure of intrigue from the hung-over streets of New Orleans to the impassible conduits of Jakarta where dealing with the trials of travel is as important as your strategy for trying to win a golf tournament.