Pro golfers put on the miles. Their cars, their planes — it’s a worldwide tour these days, so they know crafty travel tricks better than anyone.
Colin Montgomerie is no exception. The 31-time DP World Tour champ and seven-time PGA Tour Champions winner has won 50-plus tournaments all over the globe. Even the day he was interviewed for this story, for example, Monty had flown from London to New York City just the day before.
We caught up with Montgomerie at the Berenberg Invitational and asked for his best travel advice. If anyone knows, it’s him.
“If you know what you are doing, and you’re ahead of time, send them across,” he said. “FedEx them, or those other generic terms whatever you use, DHL or Ship Sticks. You just get rid of them, right? And that’s that, done.”
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Montgomerie said this way you don’t have to worry about lugging them around, which is annoying, but also the airline losing them. (Side note: The author of this article dealt with that last summer, and the clubs were gone for two-plus months.)
The waiting game at baggage claim is no fun, either.
“You get your suitcase off the carousel. OK, that’s fine. Now, oversize, oversize. Where’s the oversize?” Montgomerie said. “There. Then you wait. Then every other item comes through and you don’t have your clubs. Everyone’s left, and you’re left. It’s the loneliest place. So, No. 1, send clubs forward, if you have the opportunity.”
As for a Scottish-centric trip?
“We always think of Scotland as a fine country, but we’ve never ever sold it on the weather, unfortunately,” Montgomerie said. “You just never know what you’re going to get. The weather forecasters don’t know either.”
The key, he says, is to use thin layers.
“We used to have one great big warm thing that we put on, but now it’s layers, so if it does warm up, you can take one off, peal off as you go,” he said. “So, layers, I think that’s very important.”