5th Jan was the first day of a very busy month. My first stop was Durban South Africa, this would be my 2nd visit in 30 years, I still have one of my oldest buddies Tony Ritchings living there with his family and a catch up was on the cards.

The flight over was via Joberg, we probably had the longest walk I’ve ever experienced at an airport to get to our connecting terminal. Two young lads were sitting in front of me and one looked vaguely familiar! It was only when I contacted Tony to say let’s meet for a beer that he told me we had just missed him at the airport, he was picking up Matt….. who was one of the lads sitting in front of me. So what you might ask but I haven’t seen either of them for 15 years and Matt would have been 6!

Durban was very hot and sticky, which meant trying to get prime time to shoot and interview the pros at the Volvo championship was difficult as no one wated to be outside for longer than necessary.

However we did get some good time with Padraig and I managed to get some nice shots of Raffa on the course in the pro am. I’ve shot both several times before they are always great to work with.

We had to get a front cover shot for Golf Monthly of Nicolas Colsearts, it should have been fairly straightforward but as he was playing in a Pro Am it didn’t give me much time to find a suitable location and also set up my lights. Nicolas was great and we managed to get the shot but on the way back to the media room I was bumped into sending my camera flying landing lens first on to concreate. The end result was a much needed, very damaged expensive Canon 70-200 lens that wouldn’t function properly for the rest of the trip!