“Golf is all about the obsession to do better, for sure,’’ he says. “The good thing about golf is that of course you play against others but you also play against yourself. And this is what makes it a little bit less physical and more like a brain sport – it is mostly in your brain that things start to happen.
“If you think negatively before you tee off, thing happen negatively. And if you think positively you are more successful. That is one of the hard things about it.”
Von Gunten has had an on-again, off-again love affair with golf over his 38 years. It began as he was growing up in the small Swiss city of Neuchâtel situated – as fate would have it – right in the middle of the country’s watch-making region.
“There’s only one golf course,” says Von Gunten, a left-hander. “It’s a very
small town – 30,000 people living there. And we used to drive past the golf course on our way to the city. I would always see this golf course and think ‘This looks like an interesting sport’.
“My parents were friends of some golf club members and so I had my first round when I was about 12. But then the sport completely vanished out of my life.”
As Von Gunten worked his way through school, his sporting attentions turned to tennis, biking, badminton and running. But, like so many other businessmen today, once he joined the corporate world, the desire – and the opportunity – to play golf resurfaced.
Von Gunten’s first experience of Asia was a posting in Singapore – and he suddenly found himself surrounded by courses.
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