The drifters | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

IT'S LIKE rush-hour traffic in Hawke's Bay before Labour Day weekend.

It's a death wish at the junctions, the supermarkets are teeming with shoppers and it isn't helping that the pregnant clouds are threatening to break their waters.

Except this is organised chaos as I link up with several journalists to hook up to a conference call via New York to interview four world-class golfers from the United States as they prepare to compete in the second annual Kiwi Challenge at the Cape Kidnappers Golf Course on November 11 and 12.

Diligent defending champion Hunter Mahan is the exception to the rule. He's there even before challenge spin doctor Craig Brown, a stark reminder of how he approached the inaugural event last October when he arrived to check out the course before Australian Adam Scott, and compatriots Brandt Snedekar and Anthony Kim and then jetted off with the lion's share of the $3.92 million prizemoney when he beat a higher-ranked Kim in an extra hole play-off after the pair were tied at the end of 36 holes.

The first 18 holes were played at Wall St tycoon Julian Robertson's other picturesque golf course at Kauri Cliffs, but this year the 36-hole strokeplay event, tailor-made for TV, is centred at Cape Kidnappers, which Golf Magazine has ranked as the 36th best in the world and the fourth best among those built in the past 50 years.

Brown handles the interview with aplomb, rotating questions with scribes but hooking up Camillo Villegas and Sean O'Hair proves to be a challenge.

It's not a poor reflection on the other professionals at all. It doesn't help that Villegas is in Colombia somewhere playing the "role model" for budding South Americans and the consummate diplomat when overseas while O'Hair is at a speaking engagement in his hometown of Pennsylvania as his wife, Jackie, desperately tries to get him on line with the help of an agent.

They are the "young guns" of the golfing world - Mahan, O'Hair and Villegas are all 27 while Kim is the baby-faced assassin at 24.

Kim is also early, but Craig apologises for the two-minute delay as O'Hair explains his unconventional path to professionalism.

Earlier, an apologetic Villegas explains he had problems with the pin number to hook up to the conference but minutes into the interview an amused press wonders what's happening when he says: "I think it's the cops over there."

Kim also has the media laughing as he reflects on how he went shark fishing in the Bay waters to unwind after the tourney compared with Mahan who opted to go trout fishing in Taupo.

 Kim said: "Well, I'll tell you what. I know I said I went shark hunting but, really, all I did was throw up. I want to make sure whatever I'm looking for is actually in the water that week."

When a journalist explains that in New Zealand chucking in seas is referred to as "burly", fairway joker Kim replies: "Well, I had a lot of burly."

 Jokes aside, when the four pull out their drivers and irons at Cape Kidnappers, it'll be time for the young to make some quick bucks on an enviable invitational whirlwind tour courtesy of the Robertsons.

In typical pre-match sparring fashion, world No 25 Mahan talks up the three other "great players" he knows from the time they were junior golfers, especially fellow Texcan O'Hair.

"Other than the fact that they are young, they are great players and it's going to be a challenge," he says of No 14 O'Hair, No 16 Villegas and No 22 Kim.

 The thousands who flocked to Cape Kidnappers last year will recall ranking means nothing after Hunter, who was ranked No 38 last October, upstaged then No 8 Kim for the bragging rights.

Hunter again reveals he's serious by being here on the Sunday before the competition to take stock of the course with his caddie, John Wood, who meticulously took down notes in wet weather last year.

"I'm going to give myself some time to get acclimated to the weather and to the conditions and time change and everything. And also allow, just in case my clubs don't make it, a little bit of time for my baggage to catch up to me if need to be," he says, explaining his clubs didn't make it to the British Open this year until two days after he had arrived at the venue.

"This event, I think it's as important as any event we play all year and I'm going to make sure I have everything on my side and give anything that can happen like that a chance to kind of recover."

Preferring the switch to one golf course, Mahan impresses the need to play a game of patience on a course he likens to the British Open links variety.

"You can't get too aggressive on this type of golf course. You can make some bogeys and doubles quickly. The last nine, 12, 13 holes you'll have to start paying attention to where you are and, if you need to be more aggressive, you have to change your game plan a little bit."

Unlike Villegas and O'Hair, Hunter sides with Kim in rating winning the four majors as the ultimate, ahead of the recent euphoria surrounding the inclusion of golf as an Olympic sport.

"I would put all four of the majors ahead of the Olympics. The Olympics, it's brand new and the majors have been around for a long, long time, and they have had a great run of champions. I think those are the tournaments everyone wants to win.

"The Olympics is interesting, just because I didn't grow up dreaming about winning a gold medal. I grew up dreaming about trying to win a major. It's different in that aspect, but the fact that you have an opportunity to win a gold medal for your country, it's kind of mind blowing really, and it's seven away, so it's kind of hard to fathom what it will mean to us, being so far away.

"But I'm sure when it comes around, I think Anthony and I and Sean and Camilo, we are all going to be at our peak golf wise, so I think we will be really excited about it when it rolls around," says Mahan, who plays in the ADT Skills Challenge next week before the Nedbank [former Sun City] tourney in South Africa.