Late on Tuesday afternoon, Florian Fritsch is just to the south of Lisbon. This is a journey that began by road when his involvement in the British Masters ended, around 4.30pm on Sunday, included a voyage from Portsmouth to Bilbao and concluded at lunchtime on Thursday when the German teed off in the first round of the Portugal Masters.
There is no charity or sponsorship element to reveal here. The 30-year-old’s life, that of a professional within touching distance of full European Tour status for next season, is unique because of the form it takes.
Fritsch estimates he drives 28,000 miles a year. This year he will play in 18 of the 27 events he is eligible for because they are the ones he can drive to. “I average about 90kph [56mph],” he says. “Think about it; I probably spend a lot less time in my car than people who commute in and out of London. They are hardly moving.”
As a university student in the US, Fritsch used to “hop on and off planes like people take the bus” but a decade ago, during a flight from Frankfurt to Turin, turbulence was to determine his future. During what he recalls as a “very rocky” mid-air spell, he turned to a German amateur golf coach sitting alongside him to ask what would happen if the worst-case scenario transpired. “It will be very quick” was the stark reply.
Fritsch says: “That made me start to think more about the situation. At first it was a critical interest, then discomfort, then a little stress, then fear. I think it is a bit unfair to call it a phobia. I am afraid of a combination of circumstances, including heights. I have no problem with a rocky landing or take-off. I don’t feel the same at 36,000ft.”
By 2010, the situation was acute. “I was sitting in Zurich airport, waiting to head to Qatar for a tournament,” he says. “It was too much for me to bear. I decided to go home on a train and quit golf.”
Fritsch was a fortnight too late to begin the process that would have made him a teaching professional. With limited status on the Challenge Tour, and little else to occupy himself, he returned to playing. By the end of that year, he had passed through qualifying school to earn a full European Tour card.
“I enjoyed it out there on my own,” he says. “I felt no pressure, like I had to do well to paint the picture of a perfect athlete. I was playing on my own terms. I was also actually quite mad. All my life I had been beating myself up over golf and the one year where I really didn’t do anything, I earn that card. I thought: ‘Is golf really that messed up?’”
During these intervening years, Fritsch meddled with a dozen therapies – some of them weird and wonderful – to cure his fear. “A bunch of them made it worse. I went to one of these airline seminars over a weekend, where 10 people sit around in a circle. You get asked what it is you are scared of and they end up with about seven points on the board because of duplication.
“I thought: ‘The person who brought up point two? That’s valid. Why wasn’t I afraid of that before? Point six, too.’ I went there with one fear and left with three. All that did was cost me a lot of time, stress and money.”
Fritsch has not set foot on a plane since 2013. He is perfectly at peace with that, saying that being alone with one’s thoughts for long spells in this age of smartphones is no bad thing. It helps that he is, by his own admission, “talkative and analytical” by nature.
But what do fellow golfers make of this life? “A bunch of people are sceptical,” he says. “They can’t imagine being in this profession and not flying. Others have come up to me and said: ‘I’m afraid as well. I don’t want to mention anything in case it damages my image or sponsorship options.’ Then there are a lot of people who are simply quite interested in my story.”
Fritsch is 104th on the Race to Dubai, with the top 110 guaranteed full exemption for 2017. A tie for seventh at the Dunhill Links Championship this month suddenly enhanced his claim.
“It is two-sided emotion,” he says. “Six weeks ago I was nowhere, I didn’t even have a decent standing on the Challenge Tour for next season. To be where I am now, that has definitely bumped up my mood. The other side is that pressure, you feel like you have something to lose. That burden is something I have to try to withstand.”
Not that he is busy with permutations. “You would need to go to university and study mathematics to work that out,” Fritsch says with a laugh. “Honestly, with the amount of people you have to consider, the amount of money you have to divide an unknown number of ways, then you have to concentrate on your own performance and how that may go. You’d have to be at least a university junior to produce accurate numbers. I would rather spend more time playing video games. Rankings and points systems are one good way to keep people in jobs.”
Fritsch would have a long discussion with his family if the point ever came where he was eligible for the PGA Tour and had a life-changing decision to make. For now, his ambition lies in establishing himself as a consistent European Tour performer. “I have other interests. People who say they will give up absolutely everything to be the best? That isn’t me. I am not willing to give up my entire life.”
