Matthew Southgate only just arrived in time for the opening round of the Hero Indian Open after an admin error with his visa application left him waiting in a hotel room in Singapore studying Youtube videos and yardage charts to prepare for one of the toughest courses on the DP World Tour.
Southgate carded an impressive five birdies during an opening round level-par 72 at DLF Golf & Country Club on Thursday after arriving in India just a few hours before his tee time.
The Englishman had still been in Singapore at 9pm local time on Wednesday night when he found out that a new Visa application had been approved and he was going to be able to make his Thursday tee time in New Delhi. Until that moment, it was something which had very much been in doubt.
Originally scheduled to fly on Monday, he realised he had accidentally applied for the Visa on his new passport (it's common for professional golfers to have more than one), rather than the older one with which he had flown out to Singapore, and he had left his other passport at home.
"I was supposed to be coming Monday afternoon and obviously like a lot of us I have two passports, so I've travelled with my slightly older passport and the visa application had gone into the new one, so it's a bit of an admin error really," Southgate explained of his dramatic route to the second event of the Asian Swing.
"It's not like me to leave the house without checking something like that, especially on such a long haul flight. And it's not like my manager Sam to not say you know, make sure you take the other passport. I mean, it's quite amazing really, we're quite efficient the pair of us so you know there was no one to blame. I wasn't upset. I was disappointed that I had to sit there for three days. But there was no one to blame.
"So we had to put in a new application for the passport that I did have with me, and you know those things just take time. And when the clock was ticking down yesterday, it got to sort of 9:00 PM in Singapore and I thought I'm dead and buried here, I'm not going to be out to play and then I got a phone call saying right it's come through you're on a flight. So I was like, you know, quickly pack the room up to get to the airport."
Left to endure a three-day wait for news in Singapore, Southgate tried to do as much preparation as he could for his first trip to the Hero Indian Open by relying on Youtube and pictures of yardage charts while his caddie walked the course without him.
"I think I had enough time really to get my head around the fact that that probably was going to happen," he said. "You know, I was on my own. There was no one else there. So all day Wednesday, I'm sort of thinking, you know, just get it in your head that you're playing and if you don't end up playing, you just get on a flight and go home. That's like, the easiest way of dealing with it. So I've sort of done as much research about the golf course as I could. I had the yardage charts. I had photos of all the yardage charts sent through to me, which is helpful.
"And then I watched as much on YouTube as I could. I've sort of watched every shot of Stevie Gallagher when he won in the final round round here and then the same with Marcel (Siem) last year. But it's very difficult. I mean the optics through a camera is very, very different. You don't see the undulations. It's very difficult on the TV to tell whether a putt is really that fast."
Having landed in Delhi at 5.30am local time, Southgate then ended up with around an hour and a half to practise before teeing off for his opening round.
Settling in quickly, he began with three consecutive birdies, adding another at the sixth to make it to four under par. It didn't all go his own way though, dropping shots at both seven and eight for an outward nine of 34.
One of the highlights of his round was a near ace at the par three 12th to give him a fifth birdie of the day, but dropped shots at 14, 16 and 17 saw him finish with a level par 72 - a frustration he put down ultimately to not knowing where he was going.
"I'm so tired," he said. "I've done well really just to get round today, but it was obviously frustrating getting it to four under because I've been playing really well and I've just, I mean, my scores haven't really shown that. I've been hitting the ball quite nicely and just keep shooting around level par. So when I got to four under I thought this is great like finally, getting a bit of a round going and then I've just dropped, really I've dropped shots for not knowing where I'm going. I've never been here before, I've not walked it, not seen a practice round. Obviously I had about an hour and a half to warm up this morning by the time I'd managed to have a couple of hours kip and then you're just guessing all the time.
"And that's not like tour pros. We don't do a lot of guessing. You don't leave anything to chance, I mean, if you ever go to a DP World Tour event, you see how much work goes in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from all the players and caddies and bits and pieces and it's and it's almost impossible for the caddie to see every shot without you hitting any shots. So obviously Rich has been here walking the course bless him, but it's different when you're not, you haven't got a player to see the putts rolling out, see the chip shots like and I've just come unstuck a couple of times just from not knowing.
"You know, I've had a couple of lies in the rough that I thought I could play certain shots and the rough is just a different style rough than what we've played all season.
"But I think it's a great golf course. You know that that was a nice surprise, really. It's pristine condition and I've never been here before, and I'm glad I've come because a few people said that it would potentially suit my game and the greens weren't too fast. The greens out there are perfect speed for me. I just feel right at home on the greens, which is a big thing, you know? So it's nice to just sort of as soon as I turned up, I felt I settled into the round really quickly, which is obviously massive.
"Like after what I've just had the last three days and then getting here this morning, it was lovely to rattle in a few birdies in the first few holes, you know, I’ve started birdie, birdie, birdie and you think, well, at least now if I do make a course management error or do something silly, I've got a few shots in the tank. You know, I've got a few shots stored away that actually will sort of counteract something bad happening."
Southgate said he is now looking forward to a little bit of rest, but won't have too long to recover and reset before his second round, which he gets under way alongside Calum Hill (-1) and Rhys Enoch (E) at 7.00am on Friday.
"It would have been helpful to have just got here Monday really, but I'm glad that it's done and I am grateful for being here and getting around in level par because it would have been a disaster if I had turned up and shot a bad score and sort of blown myself out of it completely," he added.
"So hopefully get a bit of rest and come back and have another go tomorrow now that I sort of half know where we're going."
