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TSN Senior Reporter

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CARNOUSTIE, Scotland -- Jhonattan Vegas was supposed to arrive in Carnoustie last Friday.

Instead, he showed up Thursday morning, just 90 minutes before his tee time. What happened in between is like the script from a screwball comedy.

The script includes missed visa renewals, some consulate confusion, a crashed UPS system, a visit to Toronto and a helicopter ride. Oh and he lost his clubs along the way too.

“It was like a horror movie happening for the past week,” said Vegas, able to laugh at it because he did manage to make his opening round tee time. “Even if somebody tried to do that on purpose you couldn’t really do it.”

Vegas, a Venezuelan-born golfer who now makes his home in Houston, had his misadventure start last Thursday morning when he realized his visa to travel to the United Kingdom had expired, something he chalked up to misreading the order of the date and month. He was hoping to leave that day but knew quickly there was no chance of that.

No problem, he thought. It’s possible to get a visa in 24 hours. So he sent off an application on Thursday morning and expected it to arrive on Friday.

“For some weird reason the people at the consulate in New York decided not to respond to the application,” he said, “So then it was the weekend and they responded on Monday morning saying that I applied for the wrong visa.”

So it was back to square one.

The proper forms were completed and Vegas was hoping that he would see his visa on Tuesday morning in Houston via UPS. That would allow him to get to Scotland on Wednesday and have a brief look at the course before his first round.

But, of course, that would be too easy.

Vegas sat in his car in front of the consulate in Houston awaiting the arrival of the UPS truck with his visa. And he waited. And waited. And waited. For seven hours he waited and it never arrived.

Turns out the UPS system crashed, halting all deliveries and Vegas needed another day to get his documentation.

Finally, on Wednesday morning, with papers in hand, he started his journey. From Houston, he flew to Toronto – yup, Toronto. Then from Toronto he went to Glasgow. At the Glasgow airport, his agent arranged for a helicopter for him to reach Carnoustie where he arrived at 9 a.m. Thursday morning, roughly 90 minutes prior to tee off.

Only one problem – his clubs didn’t make it with him. Turns out they were struck in Toronto.

“Maybe they want to stay there for next week,” joke Vegas, who has won the last two RBC Canadian Opens in the Greater Toronto Area. Without weapons, Vegas’s caddie scrambled to get a set made – they weren’t his brand and they weren’t precisely his specs, but at the very least, he had a set of clubs, and, after 20 swings on the range, he made his tee time, ending up with a score of five over.

“At the end of the day, I gave it a try,” smiled a tired Vegas who estimated he got two hours of sleep on his adventure. “I would do it every single day. It’s fun playing here. It’s fun playing majors. It’s fun playing the Open.

“To be honest, it was fun even though the journey seemed really crazy and frustrating at times. I just thought somebody was really playing a joke on me. It couldn’t be that way, how everything got interrupted on the way.”

This is not the first time Vegas has had visa issues travelling. Last year, the RBC Charter from Royal Birkdale was held up an hour while his paperwork allowing him to enter Canada was sorted out. That, of course worked out just fine as he went on to win.

He’ll need some good breaks to repeat that here at Carnoustie. Of course after the last week, you’d think he’d be due for a few of those.