From Down Under to Myrtle Beach for four years straight

Golfers come from far and wide to play in the Myrtle Beach World Amateur Handicap Championship.

A total of 26 countries and 48 states are represented, in fact.

But nobody has traveled farther and made more of an effort to participate in the tournament over the past four years than Adelaide, Australia resident Chris Kay.

If you can trust a Google search, the distance from Adelaide to Myrtle Beach is 10,333 miles, and a direct flight would take 21  1/2 hours. Of course the actual route is circuitous and the journey requires at least three layovers.

So Kay spends the better part of two days on his golf pilgrimage to the World Am, and the better part of two days getting back home. Because of the time change, he gains a day coming to the U.S. and loses a day going back home.

“It’s more impressive in kilometers,” Kay said, referring to the direct distance of 16,630 kilometers each way. “I’ve been around the world four times in four years. It doesn’t matter. If you want to do these things you have to go.”

The round trip flight to the tournament earns Kay enough reward miles for a free annual one-hour flight to Melbourne to attend an Australian Rules Football game.

What has kept Kay, 59, who is single and childless, going through the traveling hassle for each of the past four years?

“All the guys here,” Kay said. “It’s a great time. You meet new people. The golf is great. It’s away from home, it’s somewhere to go away. It’s a great time and hopefully I can keep coming back.”

Kay learned of the World Am in an email.

“Initially there was no want to come here at all,” he said. “I had absolutely no idea the tournament existed. You subscribe to these things, and this email came through about the World Amateur Handicap Championship. I thought, ‘Well yes, sure, I can be a world champion.’ I looked at it and thought it looked like fun. I applied to go and they accepted my credit card.

“… There have been incidents over that period of time that made me come back, and it had nothing to do with good golf.”

The trip to Myrtle Beach includes a flight from Adelaide to either Brisbane or Sydney before taking the trans-Pacific flight to the U.S., and a minimum of at least two more layovers to reach Myrtle Beach.

He missed a connection in Fort Worth on his first trip and had to stay overnight in Charlotte, and this year Kay had a layover in San Francisco. “That was an abject failure because my money hadn’t come through to my credit card, so I was stuck at the airport for 10 hours,” Kay said. “That’s fine though, I met a great bartender and we shared many stories and many drinks.”

Kay hasn’t flown all the way to Myrtle Beach since his first tournament in 2013. He has a new tradition of staying at the home of friends Fred and Barbara Steele for a few days before the three-hour drive to Myrtle Beach for the tournament.

Fred is a World Am participant and Kay met the couple at the Sheraton Hotel bar at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center on the eve of his first tournament round, as he was contemplating how he was going to get to the golf courses each day.

“I was laughing at myself because it was going to be a very expensive group of taxi rides,” Kay said.

They struck up a conversation and by happenstance he and Fred were in the same flight, so Fred offered to drive him to the courses each day. They’ve become good friends since.

“Something falls in your lap,” Kay said. “Unfortunately for Fred and Barbara, I landed in their lap. They can’t do enough to make my stay really good and I can’t thank them enough.”

Kay has stayed with the Steeles three consecutive years and the three usually tour an area for a few days before or after the tournament – it was North Carolina one year and they plan to visit Washington, D.C., over four days this year. Kay met the Steeles in Sydney, Australia a couple years ago.

Kay lost his 30-year job as a technical assistant in the slumping gas and oil exploration industry in March 2015, and used money from his severance package to make the trip last year. He now has a part-time job in the industry but had to dip more into his severance for this year’s event.

“If anyone wants to give me a job I can come back again and again,” Kay said. “Things work out generally. . . . If they get me a job here I’ll come and live here.”

Kay plays golf recreationally in a social club. “I try to encourage some of them to come but they all say it’s too far to go,” said Kay, who is a minority owner in a racehorse in Australia. “Somebody will come with me some day.”

There are six players from Australia in this year’s World Am, though none have as long of a commute as Kay.

Kay said he has a handicap index near 16 at his home course and is playing this year in Flight 21 for senior men (ages 50-59) with a handicap range of 12.0-12.6. He has had mixed results in the tournament. He finished fourth in his flight to win a prize in his second year, finished in the middle of the pack in his first year and finished near the back of his flight last year.

“It was absolute rubbish last year,” Kay said. “All options are open this year.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2016 at 8:51 PM with the headline "From Down Under to Myrtle Beach for four years straight."