MÁLAGA
MIAMI
DUBAI
PHUKET
SINGAPORE
SYDNEY
“Always travel east to west, and always eat yo- ghurt first thing at breakfast,” says Jim Lamont, the trim, affable 9-handicap with a military back- ground who founded Kalos Golf in 1997. When- ever Lamont is early for a commercial flight in an empty airport, he’ll walk the wrong direction on moving walkways for exercise. He’s forever grate- ful to the ghosts of British imperialists, despite their wicked ways, for dotting the globe with golf
PASSENGERS AT THEIR LOWEST GO VIRAL when they get air rage. I’ve only ever experienced ground rage, a milder cousin. Whenever a flight delay is announced, hot spasms shoot from the pit of my stomach to my suddenly grinding teeth as my neck tenses, the anxious energy disburs- ing in two terminals of sweat above my ears. Doesn’t even need to be my flight. A pushback of just 20 unexplained minutes is enough to stoke oh-so-many bad memories, all formed in a life of perhaps no worse than average luck getting peri- odically trapped inside the house of cards that is the American commercial air system. I was recently having an attack – a $5 orange from Hudson News combined with headlines about air traffic controllers striking against the US government shutdown gave the spasm an acidic, fruit-forward note in my esophagus – dur- ing an attempt to leave my home regional airport last year. Staring at the familiar dingy blue carpet and overflowing trash of good old gate B6, I con- centrated on taking deep breaths and letting go of my fresh and irrational hatred towards just about everything. If my person and golf clubs could sur- vive the gauntlet of three connections to Sydney, an astonishing reward awaited that would surely correct my generosity of spirit. Kalos Golf, a travel company based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, had invited me to join a tour called “Golf Around the World.” Aboard a char- tered Airbus A321, which normally has a capacity of 220 passengers but this one had been refitted with 52 full laydown seats, our group would travel to play golf twice in Australia, Singapore, Thai- land, the United Arab Emirates, and three times in Spain, in that order, as we worked our way back to the US following the convenient clip of time zones and the turning of the Earth.
122 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2026
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