Hail of a time in Abu Dhabi desert

CADDIE'S ROLE: Being hit by a hailstorm in the desert is bad enough, but then losing your way to the tee is really rubbing it in, writes Colin Byrne

THE EUROPEAN Tour stretched its borders in recent times in order both to extend its calendar and to take advantage of the weather in countries situated nearer the equator. This globalisation has given a new lease of life to the slightly misleading connotation of the European Tour, with over 30 per cent of the tour’s events taking place well outside Europe’s boundaries.

It has changed the nature of our golf and the extent of our travel and made it possible for us to play when most of Europe, as we know it, is cracking ice or so heavily muffled in clothing that swinging a golf club would involve an act of unhealthy contortion.

The 2009 season kicked off in earnest last week in Abu Dhabi, where the temperatures were more conducive to golf than back home. That was until the heavens opened on the Tour early on Thursday morning as many caddies and players alike had been lured into thinking that it doesn’t rain in the desert. It shouldn’t, it couldn’t, it wouldn’t – but it did.

It was not just a downpour, the precipitation came in the form of skin-stinging hails such as no local can remember in the Middle East. Many bagmen regretted leaving the rain gear and umbrellas in their lockers as the hail bounced up around their bare shanks. The courses in the desert do not have to worry about rain as a rule, so their drainage is not built to deal with sudden outbursts of rain. The result was that play was delayed by two hours while they mopped up the flash flood.

Despite the Tour having found new playing fields for its boys in faraway places, the demands on the schedule have tended to force us into playing these destinations either just a month too early or a few weeks too late. Whether it’s dealing with deluges in the desert or downpours in Andalucia, it seems difficult to find the appropriate weather slot.

So last Thursday marked the first hail delay in the desert’s golfing history and thus the first event to entail an early morning restart for half the field on Friday.

Restarts are a little bit messy, with 60 players and their caddies putting immediate demands on the catering facilities, the locker-room, the range and the transport system to get them all back to the holes they vacated at dusk the previous night. Logistically, it is difficult for the organisers to deal with such a surge early in the morning.

The players go through their usual routines and allow some extra time to get back to the hole they left on the previous evening. Depending on what part of the course you had to get to, you either took a golf cart from behind the range or a courtesy car from in front of the clubhouse. We were designated a car to take us to the fifth tee.

At 7.35am on Friday last, after much prodding of the driver, we finally exited the car-park in search of gate seven near the fifth tee. There was myself and my player, Alex Noren, Alistair Forsyth and his caddie, all full of the early morning banter that the camaraderie of group inconvenience sometimes brings.

By the time we noticed that we were heading at high speed towards Dubai, the only option was to divert across the desert in what looked like the “crow-would-fly” direction of the front nine of the Abu Dhabi golf course. There were fresh jeep tracks ahead of us, we were confident at 7.39 that we were following the trail of another courtesy jeep going the right way.

The sand became less compacted and more uneven as we turned a corner and realised that there was a well-constructed fence between us and the golf course with no opening in sight. The banter gave way to urgent questioning of our location and how, with less than five minutes to go till the klaxon was due to sound for the restart of the first round of the Abu Dhabi Championship, were we possibly going to get there on time.

It was a four-wheel drive jeep of some sort and our driver was being encouraged, quite easily, to test the limits of its off-road handling. With a mud splattered wind-shield and four bemused passengers, the vehicle pulled into gate seven at 7.49. Two caddies thrust balls and drivers into their players’ hands and told them to run in the direction of the fifth tee. Our other playing partner had already hit but was confused as to why both his playing partners had not bothered to show up to finish off their rounds; he had come out with a driver with a better sense of direction.

There were no penalties incurred by our players for their late arrival on the tee. The chief referee approached us on the sixth hole to find out what had happened. In all my years of caddying it is fascinating to experience yet another slightly freakish occurrence in a tightly monitored professional sport. The responsibility in the case of delays is for the player to get himself back into position on the course, and the tardy arrival could have resulted in disqualification.

The seasoned travellers among us have long since learned that getting in a taxi in the Middle East requires confirmation of directions from the driver unless you want a long, circuitous trip to your destination. It seems that the same applies to courtesy car drivers: check your directions back onto the golf course after a rain delay.