Four years? It certainly didn't feel that long ago as we went through the familiar routine of chatting to the friendly security chap at the main entrance and then waited briefly for a courtesy van to whisk us from the car park to the media centre, our home away from home for the next six days.
Four years. What can possibly have changed in that time? Same magnificent clubhouse, same emerald green fairways and sparkling white bunkers, same plantations of tall brown tussocks swaying lazily in the breeze, same anticipation. Surely the tussocks have grown since we were last here? Not really, says our van driver. They are trimmed regularly, apparently; a mammoth job for someone. I am not surprised. Fastidious owner Sir Michael Hill likes things just right when his place is on show to the outside world.
Four years. They've moved the media centre from where a spacious, sunlit and airy marquee used to be to a large converted golf buggy shed next door to the main building. Concrete walls and steel roof girders instead of billowing canvas; significantly cooler but entirely functional.
Four years. I have itchy feet and can't wait to climb the hill to the back of the 18th green, to recharge memories of sky blue views to every point of the compass, towards the Remarkables, Coronet Peak, Lake Hayes, the Crown Range. Below me four pros begin their practice rounds, their drives booming high above the first fairway, sounding like mini missiles cutting through the crisp air, landing softly far, far away. I wish I knew how to hit a golf ball that far and that straight.
On the 18th green a lone golfer is practising his putting, all downhill attempts, to a non-existent hole, getting ready, optimistically perhaps, for when the pins are moved there at the business end of the tournament. Back up the fairway, a sign of things to come perhaps as a member of the ground staff hoses a downhill section.
A dry golf course may be a fast golf course, but with that extra run goes the unpredictability of awkward bounces and kicks. But the officials who have set up the course have also mowed the rough appreciably on this most testing of finishing holes and if approach shots are sprayed fairly wide of the mark, the lies should be a lot more forgiving than in previous NZ Opens when, often, the only option was to hack the ball out of the thick fescue.
Back in the media centre and the first of what will be a passing parade of pro golfers this week wanders into the interview suite for the opening press conference. In four years nothing has changed about the format. We ask the questions, admittedly not always deeply probing, and seasoned campaigners like Scott Hend, Josh Geary, David Smail and Mark Brown roll out their answers comfortably. Friendly, non-intimidating stuff but, hey, it's only Tuesday. No-one has struck a shot in anger yet, or squandered a six-shot lead, or double bogeyed from one of the yawning bunkers or impenetrable tussocks. Once that happens, as it certainly will later in the week, the answers may be more terse and lot less revealing.
Four years. But now we do have a major change as the media PR folk wheel in two Japanese golfers for a chat, accompanied by an interpreter. Toshinori Muto and Yuki Kono may be ranked 260 and 279 in the world of golf, but they are a complete mystery to most of us. The interview takes on a slightly disjointed, third person feel as we try to find out what makes them tick and how they feel about being in unfamiliar territory. Well, not so unfamiliar for Muto, because he finished tied eighth here last year when Michael Hendry defended his New Zealand PGA title and, says Muto modestly, after that he was instrumental in getting the Japan Tour to ''partner'' the NZ Open for the first time this year.
Then he smiles and says he is feeling ''very positive'' about what's to come for the rest of the week and it occurs to me, sitting four rows back, that I am feeling the same way myself, despite a weather forecast of mixed fortunes and the unpredictability that is covering tournament golf. Why? Well, hackneyed though it may sound, The Hills always feels like home to me. Four years away could never change that.
