Life: Bucket List Ticked

A globe-trotting Abu Dhabi amateur on achieving a “life goal” at this year’s PGA Championship, why he’d rather watch the Ryder Cup on TV and his plea to Sergio Garcia.

- Kent Gray

The year’s four majors and Europe’s emphatic Ryder Cup performance near Paris might be consigned to history, but they’ll never be forgotten by one Abu Dhabi-based amateur.

For Charles Arnestad, the 100th PGA Championship in August was particularly memorable and not only because Brooks Koepka held off Tiger Woods by two strokes at Bellerive Country Club. When the 47-year-old South African arrived in Missouri, he completed a dream of spectating at all four of golf’s bigs and the Ryder Cup, adding Koepka’s second major win of the year to Louis Oosthuizen’s 2010 Open Championship triumph at St. Andrews, the 2011 Masters captured by Charl Schwartzel, Martin Kaymer’s runaway U.S. Open victory on Pinehurst No.2 and the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland later in 2014.

“My first two majors were won by South Africans... I thought that perhaps I was a lucky charm,” the South African chartered accountant, joked.

Arnestad conjured up the idea of ticking off golf’s biggest events “as a life goal” after cheering Oosthuizen and Schwartzel to the claret jug and green jacket respectively.