Canadian Aaron Cockerill begins complicated journey home from South Africa

Aaron Cockerill is beginning a long, complicated journey home to Winnipeg from a professional golf tournament in South Africa – and his wife could not be happier.

“We are beyond relieved that he is just getting out of South Africa,” Chelsea Cockerill said from home on Monday after Cockerill had boarded a flight for Johannesburg bound for Frankfurt – which will eventually lead to a flight to Toronto and then to Winnipeg.

“It was stressful. He had this moment last night where he was like ‘Oh my gosh, what are we going to do when the first flight isn’t available until (this coming) Thursday.”

The 29-year-old native of Stony Mountain, Man., has been in travel limbo since late last week when the first cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant were discovered in South Africa while Cockerill was playing in the Joburg Open – the season-opening event on the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour).

Aaron originally got to South Africa after two weeks in Dubai, the site of the previous tournament.

“There was no discussion (other than the normal protocols) of COVID or any variants (at first in South Africa),” Chelsea said. “Everything was fine.”

But after the first round, travel restrictions started to pop up in England and more than 20 players withdrew and started trying to get home.

There were supposed to be two more DP World Tour events in South Africa after this week – and Cockerill’s status wouldn’t have got the third-year tour member in, so the plan was for him to return home after this event.

“We foolishly thought it was only going to affect U.K.,” Chelsea said. “That morphed into a ton of other countries closing the border.”

The tour then said it would be shortening the event to 54 holes before rain washed out play on Saturday, making it a 36-hole event with Cockerill finishing in a solid tie for 12th. At that point, the tour said it was going to charter a flight to Dubai to get the players out of South Africa as travel bans and restrictions around the world – including in Canada – started to come into effect. The other two events were cancelled.

But later that night, Dubai pulled the tour’s landing permit – and the circuit’s plan was put on hold.

Chelsea then went to work.

“We reached out to the consulate in South Africa and were basically told there was no plan for Canada,” she said. “I reached out to an SOS email related to the consulate based out of Ottawa and they got back quickly and basically responded there is no plan for emergency flights out of South Africa at this point. You just kind of work with the local consulate and you need to look for your options.”

They needed to find an airport he could get to with flights to Canada and in-terminal COVID testing – as a negative test is needed to get back into Canada. There were two options – Zurich and Frankfurt.

They had a Sunday flight booked to Zurich, but 25 minutes later the flight was cancelled.

“We had to go back to the drawing board,” Chelsea said. “He went to the airport trying to talk to people because there was no government information on the website – it was not sufficient to (figure out) what we were trying to do.”

Chelsea figures she was refreshing her computer screen every 30 seconds for a good three to four hours.

“(For Frankfurt), the first available time we could book was the fifth of December. We were like ‘OK, book it’ and it disappears. We had one for the 7th and we were hemming and hawing trying to decide what to do and we ended up being able to book one for the 2nd (of December). We were like ‘OK, that’s the plan. Stay until Dec. 2. But in the back of our heads, we’re thinking Frankfurt at any point could change the rules.”

Finally, late Sunday night in Winnipeg, Chelsea got a seat on a Frankfurt flight for Monday. She immediately called Aaron and told him to get up, get a COVID test and start preparing.

“There’s a plan and it’s working, earlier than we thought,” Chelsea said. “We thought we’d have to wait until Dec. 2, but at least he’s in the air out of South Africa.”

However, much work remains. Aaron has a 7-8 hour layover in Frankfurt and has to get a COVID test – and hope a negative result gets back in time.

Assuming that test is negative, he can return to Winnipeg and must finish out a 14-day quarantine on his own in Canada at home – along with a Day 10 test.

That may sound daunting, but Chelsea said Aaron is doing well.

“Honestly, he’s just so happy to be getting out of there,” she said. “As stressed out as he was, the people in South Africa have been absolutely amazing … The airport was like a zoo, there were lines of people everywhere, people were getting emotional, everyone was trying to figure out a plan, but he said every single person he talked to who worked at the airport was friendly and beyond helpful.”

Chelsea said Aaron ran into an employee Monday he dealt with Sunday and he beamed with joy at the news, congratulating him.

“At one point, Aaron was like ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to be home for Christmas,’” said Chelsea.

If the current plan works, he’ll be back with time to spare. But, of course, Aaron and Chelsea, who got married in Winnipeg in September after two cancellations earlier in the pandemic, are thinking about 70-something tour players and caddies stuck in South Africa, along with countless others, including an under-21 Canadian women’s field hockey team Chelsea had touched base with.

The result at the tournament, meanwhile, will help Cockerill’s status after he finished outside the top 110 last year.

The original plan called for Cockerill — the first Canadian-born golfer to play a full-time schedule on the DP World Tour since the early 1990s — to return to South Africa for events on the DP World Tour’s feeder circuit early in the new year.

“We’re going to play it by ear,” said Chelsea, a chartered accountant who hopes to resume travelling with Aaron some time in the new year.

“We’ll see what the schedule is like.”

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