From the outside, it looks like your standard Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, something you’d see a college golf team pile out of in the parking lot or at an airport carrying a flight crew to a nearby hotel. But when golf course designer Bill Bergin opens the door to his Sprinter, you realize that he has taken teleworking to a whole new level.
“It’s 4 years old, and we have 140,000 miles on it,” Bergin said of his van last Friday. It was his fifth day on the road that week, with two more to go.
“Yeah, we’re going seven days a week now,” Bergin said after design visits to Memphis, Tennessee, Valdosta and Savannah, Georgia, Lookout Mountain on the Georgia-Tennessee line and a jaunt to Nashville, where he met with owners of a course in Raleigh, North Carolina, who wanted to see some of his work.
“I don’t know how we could do it without the van,” he said.
Tour golf used to be compared to a traveling band of gypsies. Bergin played back then. He held membership on the European and PGA tours in the 1980s and had the low round of the 1984 Open Championship at St. Andrews (a 66 on Saturday). Back then, a lot of players traveled in campers or caravans. Paul Azinger didn’t have a home address when he and his wife, Toni, took off in a RV to scrape out a living in the game. The last well-known player to live that kind of life was Davis Love III, who drove his custom RV – which had a seven-figure retail price tag – between domestic tour stops, hooking up somewhere near the driving range and grilling outside while he enjoyed a sunset cigar.
Now, slumming it on tour is flying in a G4 instead of a Falcon 50.
But vestiges of the old way still can be found, like persimmon drivers in a second-hand shop. “We stayed in the van the first couple of years we were on the road,” said Bergin, referring to himself and his son, Matt, who work together at Bergin Golf Designs in Atlanta. “There’s a small stove and a microwave, a toilet and a shower, and, most importantly, a refrigerator. Now we sleep in hotels more. Matt likes that a little better.
“But the main thing is work. I’m in the back all the time working. I have all my plans on my (computer) and a television back there in case I need to see something. Matt used to drive everywhere – still does a lot – but he’s become so valuable doing stuff with other projects that I’ve hired a driver, a retired guy who loves being around golf. He puts on an audio book, I fire up my computer in the back, and we’re never wasting a minute.”
And never missing a chance to enjoy life on the road.
“Matt’s never driven past a Buc-ee’s in his life,” Bergin said. “If there’s one on the way, we’re getting gas and some brisket.”
The old ways do have their advantages.
Steve Eubanks
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