Caddie's Role: It's junket season again, when the world's top golfers go on a global cruise, hauling in as much of the jackpot as they can before Christmas. My man, Retief, had qualified to play in the Grand Slam of Golf the week before in Kaua'i, Hawaii, but declined.

Despite not winning a major this year, he was top of the non-winners' overall major top finishers list, which meant he was the fourth man due to play given Tiger won two majors.

He had played in his hometown event in Pietersberg, in the north of South Africa, the previous week. The prospect of a 30-hour trip to the volcanic isles for a couple of days' play was not the most enticing given the Sun City event was on the following week. Sixty hours of flying in four days would not be the easiest on the body or the mind.

I know it all sounds very exotic, and indeed it is, but when you actually take those trips and try to perform at your best when you get there, the glamour tends to get lost somewhere, usually at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic. Many of the players in South Africa for last week's Nedbank Golf Challenge were heading off to California on the Sunday night to play in Tiger's event this week. The overnight to London and a quick connection to LA, and there they are in body - but not in spirit. Tim Clark, who played in Sun City, is going to California and heading straight back to play in the South African Open in Fancourt the following week.

On trips like this more experienced players do a cost/benefit analysis on the wear and tear weighed up against the guaranteed and potential earnings. A player in Retief's position is probably more equipped to ease the wear and tear, whereas Clark may feel more obliged to seize the moment and scoop up as much as he can. Junkets can be a bit of a juggling act.

These events are not only splurges for the players. Their bagmen and guests get treated pretty royally as well. I arrived with my guests in Johannesburg's Jan Smuts International airport to the kind of very warm welcome normally bestowed upon dignitaries. Here I was, a bagtoter, whisked through the diplomatic immigration line because I was here to caddie in the Sun City event. Our driver was waiting at the other side to take us on the two-hour trip to the resort. The manager of the hotel was at the reception to greet us and ease our check-in process. The only thing missing was the red carpet.

As caddies, we were assigned our own caddies. The scenario those of us who have been looping for a while have always longed for, the caddying lifestyle without actually having to carry the bag. Albert, my caddie last year, was appointed to me again this year. There are hundreds of caddies at the resort, so the 12 hand-picked to be the caddies' caddies are the lucky ones.

There is no driving range at the Gary Player course at Sun City so the 10th fairway is used as the range for the 12 players for the week. So primarily the caddies' caddies are known as "shag" caddies: they stand down the fairway with a "shag" bag while the players hit balls to them and we caddies pretend we are really important beside our players doing nothing. During the practice rounds and pro-am, the caddies' caddies also carry the bag. We "dignitary" caddies only have to carry the bag during the four rounds of play. Even then it is light, because our caddies take the umbrella, rain gear and any other extras that may overload us and follow us around in a support role.

The off-course activities are pretty enjoyable too. We are invited to all the functions and made to feel very important when we get there. The first function was a dinner which was televised. There were speeches and interviews on stage with the players, including the legendary Player, entertaining as ever, giving his take on one of the sponsors of the US tour, Cialis, a competitor of Viagra. There were plenty of spontaneous laughs for certain jokes which obviously permissible on South African TV earlier in the evening than they are in most countries.

There were no speeches at the following night's function, a beach party at the Valley of the Waves which culminated in a fireworks display. The lack of orations that night was made up for in the last function, a braii, or barbecue, in the bush outside the course - where we nearly ended up again on Sunday afternoon when Retief hooked his tee-shot deep into the undergrowth left of the 14th fairway. I almost stepped in what I could only assume was a large, wild animal's droppings as we tried to find a suitable dropping area of our own for Retief's ball after we located it in an unplayable lie.

One of the speakers at the braii rather stunned his audience when he suggested he understood entirely the dilemma the winners of these big tournaments have when they see their earnings slip straight into the icy grip of their wives or partners only to be squandered frivolously on clothes and accessories. He didn't receive the most rapturous applause, and I noticed many female guests declined to recognise the misguided man's efforts completely.

We all soon forgot our main speaker's faux pas as we tucked into Irish chief Conrad Gallagher's culinary creations. Gallagher is now head chef for the big South African hotel chain, Sun International, and was in Sun City to oversee the delivery of 20,000 meals a day to sponsors and their guests.

As junkets go, the Nedbank Challenge is the junket of all junkets, and if listening to a few misguided speeches is the only downside, then I think I could handle being invited back to this event for many years to come.