"A Golf Hazard on the Way to a Tournament"

Revealing admission here: I've waited until my luggage made it safely out of Heathrow to post Karen Crouse's NY Times story on the perils professional golf bags face when they hit the tarmac at London's major airport.

Crouse writes:

The golfers’ stress level is heightened this time every year because the British Open brings into play London’s Heathrow Airport, which Hunter Mahan’s caddie, John Wood, described as “the Bermuda Triangle for bags.”

On the advice of his caddie, Woodland bypassed London, “and they still didn’t make it,” he said of his clubs. Allowing time for any mishandled bags to catch up was also a factor in Woodland’s decision to move his travel plans up a day.

Now, for professional golfers, shipping clubs via service is not practical, and for many golfers saying goodbye to your close friends for 5 days prior to a big Scottish golf trip is not easy. But after two weeks of dealing with the bag rules and enforcement in Europe, apparently devised and still enforced by old SS officers, moving large luggage to and from has become an entirely miserable, expensive and stressful experience. And that's before finding out if your clubs made it.

While the cost is in the $244 range for a U.S.-to-Scottish journey, Ru Macdonald of the Scottish Golf podcast tells me that Luggage Forward has been getting strong marks from golfers who've used the service for trips to the home of golf.