Frittelli travels the world for work, fun

The longest trip – to date – was in the neighborhood of 42 hours.

Dylan Frittelli, then 16 years old, was headed to Nagoya, Japan, to play in the Junior Golf World Cup. So, he boarded a plane in Johannesburg with the rest of South African team and headed to London. That 11-hour flight was followed by a layover of roughly the same duration – which the team passed, in part, by taking a sight-seeing trip on one of those iconic red double-decker busses.

The flight to Tokyo left that night, which meant another 11 hours in the plane, but this time, the layover at the end was only three hours. And in another two hours, Frittelli and his teammates finally stepped off the plane in Nagoya, completely exhausted.

“I know when we got to the hotel, I was dead,” Frittelli recalls. “A buddy of mine gave me a Melatonin-like sleeping pill thing and when I woke up the next morning, I didn't know where I was.

“It felt like a hangover. I didn't know what a hangover was at that stage and I've haven’t really had one but yeah, it was a crazy, crazy trip.”

The first of many, as it was to turn out.

In 2017 and ’18 alone, Frittelli played tournaments in three dozen countries. So many, in fact, that his South African passport built for a 10-year lifespan only lasted six.

“The new one I got is the maxi one,” Frittelli says with a smile. “It’s got like 60 pages in it, double whatever the normal one has.”

Since turning pro in 2012, he’s won tournaments in Austria, Mauritius, South Africa and Switzerland. Frittelli also won as an amateur in Canada and Zimbabwe, as well as in the United States where he played at Texas and sank the putt that gave the Longhorns’ the NCAA title his senior year.

And did we mention Frittelli earned a degree in geography? How apropos.

Ask the 28-year-old his favorite destination and he’ll give you several. For one, Frittelli is drawn to the culture of Japan --- “I've never seen a sort of Asian country that has so much respect and so much I guess, rigidity in their lifestyle,” he says. And a beach destination like Fiji would definitely top his list of vacation spots.

“My grandparents had a house on the coast and in some of my best memories as a kid was just going down to the beach and playing in the waves and building sand castles,” Frittellie says. “And luckily now I've become strong enough to go and surf out back line and catch a few waves.”

At the same time, for a guy who played 29 weeks last year on four different continents, sometimes there’s just no place like home, which right now is Austin, Texas.

“The funny thing is we're traveling all the time, so I always, always tell this to friends and family and usually on a first date, a girl's like, so what do you like to do?” Frittelli says. “I'm like, I like to go home, sit on my couch, watch TV, play Xbox, like stay indoors because our whole life has seven, eight hours outside in the sun. Often, it's just about getting away from it.”

He may not be reaching the numbers of his countryman, Gary Player, who says he’s flown over 15 million miles, but Frittelli surely has an enviable frequent flier account. But he has no idea how many miles he has and he’s yet to cash any of those in for a plane ticket.

And he’s only splurged for a business class ticket once.

“I’m not too fussy,” Frittelli says. “… Even with all that traveling, I kind of pride myself on staying fit and healthy and not having the luxury of sleeping on the plane.”

And speaking of sleeping, Frittelli isn’t tied to hotel loyalty programs, either. In fact, now that he’s a full-time member of the PGA TOUR and playing a good portion of his golf in the United States, he normally seeks out self-catering situations and stays with friends as much as possible.

“I don't enjoy staying in a hotel because you can imagine 30-plus weeks a year just staring at a hotel TV is not going to be good for your psyche,” he says.

Restaurants can be a challenge, too, particularly in countries when the cuisine can turn the tables – quite literally -- on a person’s digestive system.

“I always make the joke that if I find a good restaurant on a Monday or a Tuesday, I tend to just go back there because on the European Tour if you're in India or Malaysia or somewhere where you're famous for getting stomach bugs, it's a good thing to keep going back to those places,” Frittelli says.

Flight delays, long layovers and the occasional upset stomach, though, don’t seem to bother Frittelli. He says he still gets excited when he’s about to get on yet another plane and thinks that’s “key” to being successful at this vagabond sport.

And he learned long ago to embrace the opportunity to meet people from other cultures. When Frittelli was 10 years old, he met Don Clarke, a legendary rugby player with New Zealand’s famed All Blacks.

Clarke had settled in South Africa and owned a tree-felling business. One day, when he was working at Frittelli’s home, he called the youngster over and had him sit on his knee while imparting some words of wisdom.

“He said … if you're going to play a sport, you've got to do it proper,” Frittelli recalls. “If you're going to do it properly, it'll take you places, you'll get to meet amazing people and that for me was the coolest thing was meeting all these people. …

“I mean, that just stuck with me. Maybe I was 10 years old, I can't even remember and that's probably what peaked my interest in like making it to an elite level in sport was that little comment that he gave me.”

And Frittelli’s enjoying the planes, trains and automobile rides that come with his life on the road.