But Aussie legend Peter Fowler will break new ground on Friday when he tees it up at North Stradbroke Island Golf Course for the Sealink Stradbroke Ferries Legends Pro-Am.

Originally intending to play the North Coast Open at Coffs Harbour Golf Club next week – the course whose car park his father helped design and build – the opening of the Queensland border has convinced Fowler to support the PGA Legends Tour events that will be played across south-east Queensland over the next 10 days.

There will be return trips to Noosa, Twin Waters and Maroochy River golf courses but the ferry ride to ‘Straddie’ offers a new experience for someone who has been traipsing the countryside chasing golf tournaments since 1977.

“I’ve never been there. And I only just found they’ve only got nine holes but they’ve got two tees for each hole for a front nine and a back nine,” said the 1983 Australian Open champion.

New discoveries were a big part of the journey for a teenage Fowler in the late 1970s.

He would average 200 kilometres a day for months at a time, driving from town to town in pursuit of a professional golf pay day.

A career on the European Tour was the stuff of fantasy when you were racing the sun through the winter months playing the infamous Queensland ‘Troppo Tour’.

“They had events, so we played them,” Fowler reasons all these years later, the mantra not too dissimilar to the one he continues to live by.

“On the Troppo Tour in Queensland we went to a lot of mining towns out west.

“A real rough one I remember was Cherrabah Mountain Resort which was out the back of Brisbane somewhere.

“I remember standing on one tee and we couldn’t work out whether the hole went one way or the other. There was no fairway or anything like that, nothing distinguishing where to go.

“That was an interesting course.

“I reckon we averaged 200 kilometres a day driving for about three or four months. The last one we went from Townsville to Mount Isa and played and then drove from Mount Isa to Brisbane in one go, which is something like 1,800km.

“There were a lot of dirt roads on that trip so we got a bit of dust in the car but apart from that it was all right.

“But that’s what we did. Peter McWhinney and Peter Senior travelled together, Mike Harwood and another guy travelled together. I travelled with a mate from Sydney, Vaughn and Perry Somers travelled together.

“We were all teenagers around that time so we had a lot of fun and learning on the road.”

Now 61 years of age, Fowler believes with the advancements in technology he hits the ball longer these days than he did 20 years ago.

In that time he has played in 309 events sanctioned by the ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia, winning 43 PGA Legends Tour events alone since 2013.

He has played 716 tournaments attracting Official World Golf Ranking points since 1986 and his European Tour record stretching back to 1983 includes 524 main tour events, 23 Challenge Tour appearances and 156 starts on the Seniors Tour.

Yet the infuriating possibility of improvement continues to drive him forward.

“I still think I can get better,” Fowler says.

“I never felt like I played that good when I was playing at my best. My short game was pretty good and I managed to get it around but I never thought I did as well as I thought I could.

“There’s a bit of technology around now and it depends how you use it.

“You can only swing as hard as you can but maximise the way your club’s set up to maximise the distance you can get because distance is a real key.

“Getting older I do club testing every year with PING so I can keep my game good enough to compete.”

And as the distance debate rages and players at the top of the world rankings push golf courses to breaking point, Fowler believes the answer lies within a near-century old design that is the jewel of the Melbourne Sandbelt.

“The more golf I play, the more I realise Royal Melbourne is a fantastic design,” offers Fowler of the No.1 ranked golf course in the country.

“If you’re in the wrong place – if you’re on the slightest downslope hitting to those greens in tournament condition, you can’t stop it on the green. But if you can place the ball and shape the ball into the right part of the fairway and play off a flat lie or an upslope with one club shorter then you can stop it on the green.

“The modern tournament courses are built for the guys who tee it high and hit it as hard as they can. And that’s why they’re dominating.

“Royal Melbourne isn’t that long compared to the long courses but in tournament condition, it’s about placing it and shaping the ball in the right places where all the modern courses don’t seem to be like that at all.

“Royal Melbourne – and a lot of the courses around Melbourne with the firmer greens – they can stand the test of time.”

Which is a topic few are more qualified to speak on than the man they call ‘Chook’.