Caddie's Role: We were back in Hawaii last week having been there only six weeks ago. The trip is long and, as all 18-hour flying time trips are, boring. But the scene on arrival makes up for all the tedium of getting here.

The island of Maui is even more beautiful than I remember it from my first visit this time last year. Maui is the second largest Hawaiian island and Kapalua where the Mercedes Championship is held, overlooks two smaller islands, Molokai and Lanai which makes the seascape very scenic.

A gauge of how you are playing on the Plantation course is how focused you are on whale spotting during your round. If you hear your player alerting you to another hump-backed whale broaching the whale-infested waters between the three islands the chances are he is not really into the round.

Many of the fairways back down the course look onto vast expanses of water where you are likely to see some sort of splashing, spouting or broaching frequently throughout your round.

Hawaii, which is some 1,500 miles north of the equator and 2,500 miles south west of California, has got a wonderful climate. There are only two seasons here, winter and summer. But the two seasons are virtually indistinguishable, with the average temperature only varying by about five degrees. Naturally it is a golfers' paradise where the weather is usually nice or even nicer.

That is unless you are running a major international golf event where no chances can be taken with forecasts for inclement weather. The PGA Tour radar picked up potential storms due to hit Maui by midday on Sunday so the leisurely late tee times of the 31-man event for last year's winners were cautiously pushed forward to the unsociable hour of 7.0 a.m.

Of course it's not easy to predict the weather pattern on such isolated isles, but sure enough the storms came early Sunday morning and pushed the starts back to their original tee times of late morning. So much for planning ahead. We could have done without that 5.0 a.m. wake-up call.

Before this sudden jolt to the system we were, as always in Kapalua, given the royal treatment. Given the undulation of the course and bearing in mind that the golf director, Gary Planos, was originally a caddie, us loopers were allowed use a golf cart until the event started on Thursday.

Even then we were transported from quite a few greens to the following tees not only for the ascent and descent but also given the relatively short days here, less than 12 hours of sunlight, it got the players around quickly.

It seems like a lot of actors hang out in Hawaii, so when the pro-am starts, the stargazers get their fill of star watching. With a three bedroomed house on the golf course going for well over $5 million, it's no wonder that stars are the type of dwellers in such an expensive location. It is the first place I have been that makes Dublin look cheap for property and they say it's rising even quicker here than it is in Dublin. I saw 'Frazier' (Kelsey Grammer ) swatting away in the pro-am, he has a modest abode on the course somewhere.

I have documented the lavish treatment us caddies have been receiving at the end-of-year junkets. Well the Mercedes event is a good way to continue such treatment and gently prepare us for the reality of many of the events that await us.

We received a bag full of Kapalua shirts and a voucher for a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses. Adam, a massage therapist, was in the caddie shack waiting to ease our weary shoulders with a complimentary rub down each day. We were also invited to the Joe Cocker concert in the Ritz Carlton resort on Friday night. Joe gave a spirited opening show on his US tour.

I don't know how old the old rocker is but I suppose he has got the face he deserves. Age does not seem to impede Cocker from giving a great gig and his voice is as gravelly and good as it was back in his Woodstock days. He seemed to appeal to many of the golfers who I spotted close enough to catch Joe's vocal spray from the front of the stage.

Being the first event of the new year there is a fresh media impetus, anxious to get a head start in player profiles and quotes. Well one commentator got his comeuppance for expressing his opinion about the foreign players on the US Tour hand picking only the best events.

Little did he know that Vijay would catch any of the commentary, he was obviously passing a TV screen at an inopportune moment for the announcer.

So when he approached the Fijian on the range after Saturday's play and asked him a question he was politely turned on his heals. It's probably time for such commentators to realise that globalism works both ways. If you have earned your playing rights on the US Tour you are entitled to choose the schedule that suits you, whether you are American or any other nationality.

Apart from a little weather complication on the final day, Maui was an ideal way to start the new golfing year. If things are not going according to plan on the course the chances are that the sight of a pod of whales breaching the clear waters of the Pailolo Channel between Maui and Molokai will take your mind off any early season swing flaws.