It’s the serious travelling time of the year again. Any of you following the salvage mission of Peter Lawrie dragging himself from Iberia to Australia in order to successfully retain his playing rights on the European Tour for next year will be aware that come October, golfers are long- hauling it to ply their trade.
Some players were starting entirely different, and less livelihood-threatening golfing missions on the other side of the world.With Rory regaining some confidence in a One Asia event in Korea last week by finishing second, my man Ernie Els joined the Asian Tour players in Macau for the week and ran third, and with those Europeans battling for survival in Western Australia, it would be fair to say that golf is in the diffused season.
The Americans are already starting their third week of the 2014 year and the CIMB Classic in Kuala Lumpur is a landmark event in that it is part of the PGA Tour’s new season FedExCup countdown. This is the first time a FedEx event has taken place in south east Asia and and is further proof of the ever-expanding horizons of the PGA Tour.
As if that's not all confusing enough as regards where the boundaries now lie in world golf, the European Tour kick-off their end-of-season mini-series in Shanghai with the BMW Masters event at Lake Malaren Golf Club.
Race to Dubai
This marks the first of four events that conclude with the denouement to the Race to Dubai in the city itself in four weeks' time.
It could be confusing were it not for the clarifying fact that the most modest of these events is worth €5 million in prize money.
No wonder we are all wandering around Asian capitals disoriented, dishevelled and in a bewildered state of disarray; they all represent wonderful opportunities to improve rankings and bank balances. These are the early end-of-year bonus trips.
I arrived in the Malaysian capital on Monday last after about 22 hours of travelling, door-to-door. It is usually easier to look at a screen in front of your seat on the plane to tell you where you are, given the well-equipped information systems of modern aircraft.
I was in a window seat so I took the opportunity to see my final destination live. I looked down upon a sea of palm trees, sub-urban developments, oil refineries and the calm waters of the Strait of Malacca as we made our final approach to Kuala Lumpur International.
It looked moist and warm down below. Well, the temperature wasn’t that apparent, it was more from my memory of Malaysia being extremely hot and humid and only getting more so as you got through the day.
There were no golf courses in sight, not surprising in a country where golf is almost exclusively for the more affluent and tourists.
This is a PGA Tour event and they want their participants to have as seamless an experience as is humanly possible.
So on top of the very comfortable flights supplied by the tournament, they also put all 78 players and caddies up in a downtown hotel.
The American players do not really have to stress themselves with world adventures very often playing in the cocoon that is the PGA Tour. So collection at the airport and transfers to the hotel were paramount in keeping the boys content in the early part of a week that must have seemed like a voyage of discovery for most of these players.
Travel tales
I killed time in the hotel lobby and heard the travel tales of some of the discombobulated-looking travellers who spoke of five-hour layovers in Atlanta, four more in Seoul and 36 hours later finding themselves in downtown Kuala Lumpur.
Others went through LA to Hong Kong and on to KL. There was a definite sense of adventure given most of these guys are used to an average two-hour trip in the States to their next event. My 22-hour transfer from Europe was looking quite tame compared to the trip from the States.
It is the first time at a PGA Tour event there was a real focus on players and caddies off course. Normally in the States we are all spread out and travel to and from the course in rented cars for the caddies and courtesy cars for the players, which, of course, leads to more isolation.
So it was a rare opportunity to share cars to the course and banter with players and caddies you would not normally mix with unless you were drawn to play with them.
We are long-hauling around the fairways of the international golf world in the early part of the silly season in peninsular Malaysia. Despite the obvious disorientation of 90 per cent of the field it is a welcome diversity from the more predictable weekly flow of the PGA Tour.
