Inside Bob MacIntyre's new life on PGA Tour - 'it’s not been easy, you’ve just got to keep learning on the road'

“It’s not really the ideal base; it’s more of an entry point to come here,” he said, having moved to a seat around a dining table that has a pile of Nike hats at one end and a set of clubs standing against the opposite wall. “It’s easier to get friends and family out, it’s easier for me to get home – I know I can get out pretty much any day back to the UK and Scotland - and it’s easier to travel around America. I had my dad (Dougie) out a few weeks ago and it’s no bother for someone to get down from Glasgow to either Heathrow or Gatwick then head straight here. Aye, it’s just easier for life, to be honest.”

Having never made any secret of being a home bird and being at his happiest when he sees the ‘Welcome to Oban’ sign on the outskirts of the tourist town on the west coast, finding himself living on the other side of the Atlantic is a gigantic step for MacIntyre. He wasn’t sure at first that he was ready to take it after being among ten DP World Tour players to secure coveted cards on the PGA Tour this season and he’s probably not going to be over there for the long haul, but it’s an opportunity to become better and, therefore, it’s about trying to suck it up for the time being.

“Completely different,” he said, smiling, when he was asked to compare Oban and Orlando. “Everyone knows I am a home bird and it’s not been easy. It’s been difficult to adjust, but, I mean, it’s always going to take time to adjust. You’re going to a different country with a totally different culture and from where I’m from everything is completely different. I feel that we’ve given it a good effort so far. It’s a building block, I suppose. It’s about just trying to keep taking steps forward and you can adjust things as you go along. Some things work for you; some things don’t. Already we are realising there are things we really like and things we don’t like. If I play this game for however long, let’s say 20 years on tour, you are going to have to learn ways of living. Whether that’s out here or back home in Scotland, I don’t know. But, yeah, you’ve just got to keep learning on the road, I suppose.”

Though most of his time so far has been spent travelling - he started the season in Hawaii then moved on to California before subsequent visits to Mexico, Puerto Rico, followed by a few ‘home’ gigs in Florida and is currently in Texas for a double-header - MacInytre’s playing and practise base is Isleworth Golf & Country Club, one of the top facilities in Orlando and venue for Jordan Spieth’s ten-shot destruction of the field in the 2014 Hero World Challenge.

“It’s ten minutes from here - and what a facility,” declared the two-time DP World Tour winner as his eyes lit up. “I don’t know if there’s a facility like it in Scotland. It’s got a golf course that is getting renovated soon, driving range, gyms, everything you need. It just makes life so much easier being able to go there all day and practice as everything is on site. It sounds daft, but you are not having to dart about here, there and everywhere. It’s all there and that reduces the time you are doing everything.”

Does he get full access there? “Yeah,” he said. “So I joined the club and you get the run of the place when you are there.They have been very good. They accommodate the professional golfers really well. As soon as you get there, you go and get a buggy and once you get that buggy, you go where you want and, being respectful, do what you want. There’s a lot of other pros based there. Danny Willett is there, as is K H Lee, Sam Horsfield and Lucas Herbert. I’ve actually not seen many of them when I’ve been there, which has been down to either me travelling or the others doing likewise, but it’s been brilliant up there so far.”

Throughout the time he’s been out in the States since the beginning of January, MacIntyre has hugely appreciated that his girlfriend, Shannon Hartley, has been with him, as was the case when the left-hander - one of four rookies in Luke Donald’s line up - helped Europe regain the Ryder Cup in Rome last September. “That’s been brilliant and it’s really the only way it was going to work. If I was out here on my own, I’d be going absolutely mental,” he admitted with typical honesty. “I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Especially when the performances aren’t good, you’d be thinking about things way too much and having her here has been great. She’s got some nice leave from work just now and when I come off the course, it’s like ‘okay, you’ve had a crap day but it’s just a game of golf’. It’s trying to put things into perspective and it’s difficult when things aren’t going the way you are wanting. I can come off the course in a bit of a mood and not be myself, so it’s great to have company. As much as it’s been difficult for me, it’s been difficult for her, too.”

The aforementioned visit from dad Dougie, who is the head greenkeeper at Glencruitten Golf Club, where MacIntyre cut his teeth in the game, came at a good time, helping lift his spirits after three successive missed cuts. “Any time you see your parents is great,” he said. “I think my mum was a bit jealous that my dad got out, but she’s been on plenty of holidays of late (smiling). I just enjoy spending time with my dad and playing some golf with him. He’s a sportsman and played golf himself to a high level. He knows what it takes to do something at that high level. I mean, if he wasn’t my dad, I would probably employ him as a coach of some sort because he knows exactly what to do and when to do it. Because he’s my dad, he knows my game inside out and he’s very honest with me. When things aren’t going right, he’ll tell me things straight up - maybe too honest sometimes (laughing) - and I think that’s one of the good things. We played at Isleworth five days when he was here and he loved it. It was probably the most golf he’d played for about five years. It was quite competitive and that will never change. If he hits a good shot, I’ll be ‘right, got to get inside that’. We obviously play off different tees now, but we love being out there spending time together.”

Asked what he liked most about America, MacIntyre revealed he had something in common with world No 1 Scottie Scheffler. “Chipotle,” he said, laughing, of the international restaurant chain that has still to reach his home town. “Nah, there’s so many good things. The golf tournaments out here are mega. It feels like every week you go to an event and it feels like it’s set up like a major. It doesn’t necessarily mean the golf course but the infrastructure of the whole place, the stands and the crowds. On the golf side, the practice facilities they have out here are unbelievable. As much as I have talked about stuff back home, I honestly don’t think that you can have the facilities back home that are out here, purely because of the weather. To be honest, it’s just golf related that I really like out here the most. In truth, we’ve not really ventured out much, though yesterday we went into Winter Garden for a couple of hours and I actually like that area. It’s about 20 minutes from here. It’s like an old town and there was live music on. Funnily enough, we were told to go there by a friend back home and it was quite nice.”

Orlando may have the Magic (NBA), City (MLS) and Solar Bears (ECHL), but its new resident is still only really interested in one sport other than golf. Thanks to live streaming, he’d been able to watch his beloved shinty side Oban Celtic record an important win a couple of days before we met up and is desperate to get a stick back in his hands before too long. “I’m still in the Whatsapp group chat and still sending messages of support,” he said of the team managed by his dad. “I’d love to be doing it right now, but it doesn’t pay the wages (laughing).” Was there a stick somewhere in that Orlando house? “I could have brought one over, but I decided not to,” he said. “Just in case I needed to have a quick flight home, I know the sticks are waiting there for me. I’m sure that if the family comes out, they’ll bring them out with them.”

Some supplies, too, as MacIntyre is partial to some products made by a well-known Uddingston-based biscuit company. “Not specifically,” he said, laughing, in reply to being asked if he’d found somewhere in Orlando that stocked some of his favourite snacks as opposed to Hershey’s chocolate, rich cookies or flapjacks. “But there are UK sections in some of the shops, so you can get the odd place selling Caramel Wafers or Cadburys Chocolate Fingers. We were thinking about making mince and tatties for dinner, but it’s too hard to get certain things to make it. But every time I go into a shop I’ll walk past the UK section just to check if there is anything new I might want. It’s also easy for people to send stuff out. But, to be honest, I’m trying to watch what I am eating out here. When I was out here at college, I put on some serious weight and it’s easy to do that.”

While Chipotle will do for now when it comes to dinners, his first meal back home will certainly taste good but what will it be and will it be cooked by his mum, Carol? “That’s a good question,” he said. “I was maybe thinking I’d be looking for a chippy on my first night back but I probably will go to my mum’s and I think the first meal cooked by family or friends will be a roast chicken dinner - 100 per cent. You just don’t get that out here and I could eat mountains of chicken dinners (laughing).”