PGA Tour Life: There’s Always Someone With A Nicer Jet


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Private jets are nice. Okay, maybe the nicest lux perk I dream about. But like all things extravagant, one can get lost quickly in envy as another faster, newer and bigger plane taxis down the runway.

Such is what Golf.com’s Alan Shipnuck discovered after hitching a ride with Branden Grace from Pebble Beach to Los Angeles for the Genesis Open. Let’s just say as one who’s had the wondrous fortune of flying avion privé a couple of trips, it’ll spoil and ruin you forever if you don’t have the means to fly that way every time.

But there’s still that envy factor.

Grace: “Man, there are some big jets parked here.”

Grace, the winner of eight European and one PGA Tour event, was seated in the cushy leather seat of a sweet 8-passenger private jet. By any measure he has arrived, and yet, at the sight of slightly fancier aircraft, Grace couldn’t help feel a twinge of envy. This is not uncommon. “We have had golfers who are playing really well in a tournament say, ‘Hey, I want an upgrade,’” says Patrick Gallagher, an executive vice president at NetJets. “DJ called once on a Saturday night and said, ‘Give me the big plane going home, I’m winning this thing.’ And he did.”

The flight was like most others, except a baby was crawling through the aisles and everyone was in a good mood. Grace, 30, admitted that earlier in his career he worried about the expense of flying private – the minimum NetJets buy-in is $200,000 – but he has long since made peace with its utility. “If I save one shot all week because I’m better rested or fresher mentally, that pays for the jet,” he said.

Despite a long, tough day Grace seemed buoyant, and why not? He had just winged in on a fabulous jet while at that very moment the Tour’s middle-class was driving to San Jose to catch the last flight out on Southwest, which would land in L.A. after midnight. But then Grace sauntered into the arrival area and was greeted by a specter: Jordan Spieth, hat on backward, chatting with Jim Furyk while waiting for his courtesy car to be brought around.

Oh, the first world problems some must endure….