ground transfers at each destination, caddie fees, booze, activities, guides, however you amortise 35 hours of trans-continental private jetting when plain domestic goes for about $8 000 per hour), time is the hardest to value. At Phuket Interna- tional customs, picture a line of a thousand trav- ellers coiled upon itself like a cobra. Now picture smiling attendants in suits holding Kalos Golf placards directing you to a different line that isn’t really a line at all but rather an empty lobby staffed by officials more concerned about offering tea or chocolate than checking your passport. Just keep walking and don’t make eye contact with the poor bastards to your left. Another van, another face towelette. This is when Lamont says, “There’s only two things you need to think about on our trips: red or white with dinner, and who do I want to play golf with tomorrow?” I was chawing with the retired physician from Kansas City on our way to an elephant sanctuary outside Phuket (to which TCS makes a handsome annual donation) when our van halted on a cob- blestone urban street. Flash-flooding had made the road impassable, so we took a detour through an alleyway so narrow that the massage workers on cigarette break had to stand up. Arm draped over his wife’s shoulder, the physician looked out the window and smiled. “So many of these places would’ve been too intimidating to arrange travel to on our own, but I haven’t been nervous or stressed once.” Like good golfers, good travellers are flexible when things go wrong. While the broader chal- lenge of Golf Around the World could be described as shepherding a horde of affluent senior citizens with the highest expectations to five destinations with rugged time-zone changes and heading off any possible reason for complaint before it hap- pens (one seasoned Kalos staffer used to manage Taylor Swift’s tour operations, and it shows) the most successful travellers on this voyage were those who embraced its vagaries. Like, say, caddie services in foreign countries. Thailand’s Red Mountain Golf Club carves through the thick forests of a former tin mine and dialogue from the uniformed female caddies con- sists of two words: “Jungle” and “Maybe!” Blue Canyon Country Club, also a former tin mine as well as site of a Tiger Woods victory, staffed two female caddies per golfer, one to drive the cart and another to hold an umbrella against the sun as you walk to your ball. “It was so weird. I’m like, why the heck am I rid- ing around in this cart with this person I can’t talk to while my wife is ahead in another cart?” com- plained one of our party. The Texan called it the best caddie experience of his career. At dinner that evening at the Rosewood – a spread of tom yum soup, crab, shrimp and cur- ries served at literally the same outdoor location where the dinner scenes of the third season of
wages. The conveniences of a dedicated aircraft range from small (passengers can leave items on- board rather than perpetually pack up) to large (in the event of the unforeseen, like dangerous political unrest, a group can just get up and go). According to TCS chief operating officer Matt Hill, a tall 8-handicap from London with terrific width at the top of his backswing, the company always books, as a precaution, alternate destina- tion hotels for tours that visit the Middle East. Pretty quickly, one sees how business practices that erode the bottom line support a greater philosophy of flexibility when serving the very wealthy. Wherever you go, there is always much more staff, space and food than necessary. If you reserve a tour to drive dune buggies but decide at the last second to bag it in favour of hanging by the hotel pool, you’re never met with even a hint of an eyeroll. As Lamont says, “I’m not a nickel and dime guy. You’ll never catch us serving pro- secco instead of champagne.” As sharp a pencil you might endeavour to keep against the luxuries delivered (18 times $2 000ish-per-night hotel rooms, 11 times unac- companied green fees, Michelin-star meals at nearly every seating, roughly a dozen private
WATER WORLDS Left: A giant wooden
orangutan greets visitors on Siloso Beach in Sentosa. Left, below: Couples golf at New South Wales. Below: Paddling into cavernous rock formations in Phang Nga Bay.
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 127
MAY 2026
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