Chisnall dons the face mask to cope with Sydney’s bushfire smoke

FACE masks are common in the most polluted cities in the world but not on Sydney’s golf courses, right? Wrong!

In a scene more like New Delhi or Beijing rather than Sydney’s pristine eastern suburbs, spectators at the Australian Open could hardly believe their stinging red eyes when they spotted golfer Ryan Chisnall playing his opening round wearing a white mask.

The Kiwi professional was coughing so much in the thick smoke from the bushfires that a spectator took pity and offered a face mask, and he did not hesitate.

“Normally you come to Sydney and it’s beautiful and clear and playing The Australian on a nice day is always beautiful so it’s quite bizarre but obviously the fires are extremely unfortunate,” he said.

“I’ve had breathing problems for a while, asthmas and stuff like that as well, so these sort of conditions really don’t help me. I didn’t bring my inhaler today so that was a bit of a mission but some bloke on the 17th fairway gave me one of those masks just to put on.

“I don’t know if it helped or not but I gave it a whirl for a bit there and tried it out. I just was coughing away and he said ‘ do you want a mask?’ and I thought I’d try it and see how it went.”

Starting from the 10th tee, Chisnall wore the mask for the remainder of his round, finishing with a creditable even-par 71, but said he was in real discomfort when he got back to the scorer’s hut.

“It’s pretty bruising, it’s an emotional rollercoaster, you go through the ups and downs,” he said. “Physically I’m absolutely fine, it’s just the constant cough and then by the end of the day the head starts to hurt a little bit but I think that’s just part and parcel of coughing so much really.”