“It was a pretty good place to pick up the game again,” he says. “My game never really started officially as I never took any lessons – I just learned it by myself. But I think when you have played tennis, the game of golf comes a little easier – you have the hand-eye co- ordination that works in both sports.”
From Singapore, Von Gunten’s career has taken him to Tokyo, back to Switzerland and now to Hong Kong with Audemars Piguet, where he has been overseeing the company’s impressive sales growth in mainland China, work that unfortunately has not allowed him quite as much time to pick up the clubs as he might like.
“Certainly I don’t play often enough,’’ he says. “I wish I could play more but my job takes up a very important part of my time – and also I am not a member here. But like all people who love the game I wish I could play more – and I want to play more.”
The strength in Von Gunten’s game lies, he says, in his long hitting and he’s hoping for some added accuracy now that he is taking on some coaching.
“I’m a hard hitter, I would say, but I am very inconsistent,’’ he laughs. “If I hit well, it goes very far but I don’t do that very often, sadly.
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