High-flying professionals are set for private take-off

Caddie's Role: My week started in keeping with the heady heights of the Amex World Championship event with a lift in a private jet back from Woburn. My friends in Dublin were so excited about me arriving home, not with the usual throng at a bustling carousel in the main terminal, but in the rarified air of the private lounge, that they had to witness my homecoming first hand.

I was dispatched onto a windy runway, onto a bus and round the back of the airport and into the private arrivals' area. It was not the red-carpet treatment that my inquisitive friends had expected to find, but just a less congested room with a few empty couches and back to the reality of regular transport back home.

The anticipation was worth the trip for my driver, despite the reality of it being as disappointing as heading back stage after a great concert to be greeted by the hollow echo of a cold corridor and warm beer and the news that the stars had just left.

The trip was extremely pleasant, though. Retief Goosen was in Dublin to take part in a company day for TaylorMade. They had requested he bring the US Open trophy with him. So myself and Sam Torrance posed for photos on Retief's plane, with his trophy, while the ever-modest "Goose" just snapped away amused by our obsession with the coveted silver cup. Only I had noticed its lid poking out of a plastic bag placed on an empty seat, Retief would not have mentioned the trophy was on board.

We arrived in the majestic Mount Juliet on Tuesday last to start a week of wild autumnal weather. Our luck of two years ago had run out, it was payback time. But despite the foul weather, Aidan O'Hara had presented the course in pristine condition as usual, the greens were almost matching the quality of the greens of 2002. The course had grown some teeth without any alterations, the temperature and yielding fairways meant it was playing extremely long. The soggy rough meant you needed to dig hard to extract your ball from it.

Most of the American players had come over from their previous event in the States, near Pittsburg, on a couple of chartered jets. One of them had a little technical fault which required a few hours' work on one of the fuel stops along the way. It was not the way the majority of the US tour are used to travelling.

What should have been a jaunt turned into a trek for a group that are used to a short hop to their next destination. According to some of the foreigners on the plane who play the US Tour, there was some serious grumbling going on about the inconvenience.

The Australians, who were observing the discontent, looked back to their days in Europe and chuckled when they remembered how some of their European adventures to places like Madeira and Morocco used to be. A detour to Iceland seemed trifling in comparison.

It is a compliment to the US Tour that everything over there runs so smoothly. The fact there should be such discontent at a minor inconvenience means that in general travel is relatively easy for the US tour players.

The success of the PGA Tour is also working against it in some ways. If you had said to Mike Weir and John Daly a few years back that you could play in Ireland for a purse of seven million green backs and there was a chartered jet with business-class seats on it to take you there they would have been extremely grateful.This year they had decided the trip to Kilkenny didn't suit their carefully chosen schedules.

Today seven million dollars seems not to be worth a mild case of jet-lag and cultural inconvenience. Why bother to go through all that when you can stay at home and play for $5 million plus every week. There is a hint of complacency creeping into the American game, such is the influence of affluence.

It is not limited to the US. I was privy to a conversation on the back of the range involving a group of European players trying to convince one of them to commission a Falcon 2000 jet to take them back to their Surrey residences after play on Sunday. The one he had originally booked was not going to be big enough to accommodate all those who wanted to hitch a private ride home from Waterford airfield. Otherwise they would have to go through the "hassle" of an inconvenient helicopter ride to Dublin airport. The range banter has moved on from Porches and Ferarris to Falcons and Gulfstreams. That is some serious progress.

News of the buyout of International Management Group (IMG, who manage many of the golfers) by Vijay Singh's sponsor may be just what the private jet junkies of the Tour dreamt of. Apparently Vijay's sponsor is into the private jet business. Why not get a share of the professional golfers' travel deals. This new departure could mark a new era of private-only flying for the already high-flying golf pro.