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Masters champ Schwartzel enjoys being a pilot
VEREENIGING, South Africa — This sounds like some kind of joke, but it’s a revealing personality portrait.
Two South African farm boys who grew up as junior teammates win major golf championships within nine months of each other at the two most revered venues in the game.
The first, Louis Oosthuizen, used some of his winnings from the British Open at St. Andrews to buy a new John Deere tractor.
The second, Charl Schwartzel, splurged after winning the Masters Tournament by purchasing a helicopter.
“It’s just different hobbies,” Oosthuizen said. “Charl has a plane and a helicopter, and he enjoys playing. I grew up on a farm, and I just enjoy farm life.”
It didn’t matter that Schwartzel didn’t have a helicopter license or that he was 10 pounds shy of the weight minimum required to pilot the Bell 206 Jet Ranger.
“I set my mind on something,” he said, “and that’s it.”
Flying is one of Schwartzel’s obsessive passions, along with hunting, water skiing and golf. He has been a licensed pilot since 2007, logging more than 300 flight-hours at home between his world travels. He bought a six-seater Cessna Stationair TC – with monogrammed tail number ZS-SCH – in 2009.
“Every time I come home, I fly,” he said. “It’s a hobby – time to break away and clear your mind and do things differently.”
Flying is common in South Africa, where the rural roads might teem with livestock or game animals and few farms have fences. His father, George, had a pilot’s license from 1991-98 and would fly from the family’s chicken farm to its game ranch. He renewed his license when Charl took up flying.
About 45 minutes south of Johannesburg in the rural/industrial area along the Vaal River is the small Vereeniging Airport where Schwartzel hangars his plane. “Airport” is a lofty name for this regional hub with two runways. There’s an unmanned security gate, a vacant control tower and a clubhouse.
For Schwartzel it’s a perfect place to keep his plane, 15 minutes from the chicken farm where his parents live. Proximity to home lets his father keep the airplane in much-needed use while Schwartzel crisscrosses the globe for weeks at a time playing golf.
Heading up the narrow taxiway and calmly speaking to air traffic control in Afrikaans, Schwartzel suddenly shouted a word his English-speaking quests could understand.
“Snake!” he blurted into the headset, pointing to what looked like a twig on the macadam about 70 yards ahead.
He steered around the snake, even going through the grass to avoid it. Instead of quickly slithering across the taxiway, though, the snake turned toward the plane.
“That’s what we call a Rinkhals,” Schwart‑
zel said of the snake that was just beneath the cockpit window and raising its head to strike, its neck fanned out like a cobra’s.
“They spit for your eyes,” he said. “The venom can make you blind. They’re very accurate up to six feet.”
Schwartzel twice took guests for a lap around Vereeniging. Both landings on the nearly deserted regional airstrip seemed perfect. The second lingered much longer over runway 03 before easing down.
“The wind switched on us,” said Schwartzel, pointing out the windsock that only he seemed to notice. He explained the risk the sudden shift threw into the routine landing in much the same way it does a golf ball approaching the 12th green at Augusta.
That kind of attention to detail is instinctive to Schwartzel. Just as he does on the golf course, he follows a meticulous preflight routine before taking the plane up.
“I take a long time with the checks,” he acknowledged. “Airplanes are very safe as long as you’re safe.”
His father marvels at his diligence: “Everything he does – his flying, his hunting, water skiing – he does it the way it should be done. That’s the way he is.”
Arnold Palmer has been flying jets around the world for decades. Phil Mickelson, like his father, has a license but usually lets others fly him around.
Schwartzel takes the challenge a step further than most. He bought the helicopter last summer shortly after he began training to get his license at the end of June.
“The sensation is different,” he said of piloting the copter. “The plane is much more comfortable to go farther.”
His father shrugs off his son’s toys: “He’s been driving tractors and harvesters all his life and was never scared of driving those. That’s why he’s not scared of flying helicopters. It’s the same principle.”
Between all the majors and playing on both the PGA and European tours, Schwartzel managed to squeeze in 45 hours – including 17 solo – of flight time necessary to get his helicopter license Oct. 5.
“It’s hard to believe he’s found 45 hours to get his license in the year that he’s had,” his father said.
Schwartzel talked the developers in his neighborhood into building two helipads about a par-5 up the hill from his new home.
Bringing the craft home for the first time the day after getting his license, Schwartzel was accompanied by two strapped-in jugs of sand. A warning among the controls in the cockpit states that a 170-pound minimum is required, and Schwartzel weighs just 160.
For now, his two aircraft can get him all over South Africa and as far north as Namibia for hunting trips. Schwartzel hasn’t graduated to the level of Ernie Els and other professional stars who have their own jets to travel the world.
“I think if he can afford a jet someday, he might because it makes traveling so much easier,” said his mother, Lizette.
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