There are some 700 golf courses on the continent of Australia, all of which golftoday.com deems "prestigious" and "picturesque."
Meg Bender didn't want to see even one of them.
"I've been playing golf since I was five or six," the women's golf team senior said. "I wanted something different, an experience other than Penn."
Two years ago, Bender, who grew up in the golf heartland of Pensacola, Fla., decided to forsake a semester of varsity golf to study abroad in Sydney, Australia - an option unavailable to most college athletes.
Her decision was well-received by both her teammates and head coach Francis Vaughn, who Bender stressed was "very supportive."
"[Vaughn] understood that golf isn't necessarily your entire experience at Penn," she said.
As for the rest the team, Bender "knew that there were three really good freshmen coming in at the time," and wasn't worried about their success.
Sydney was a complete 180 for Bender. Golf faded into the background along with the Pacific sunsets. Instead of practicing her sand shots between classes, the senior was indulging her more adventurous side by skydiving, scuba diving and traveling.
"When you skydive, it's the coolest experience," she said. "It's just you and one other person in the air, drifting down to earth. It was such an adrenaline rush."
Among Bender's various travel destinations were New Zealand, Fiji and Thailand.
"[Thailand] was the cherry on top. It was so beautiful, and was one of my favorite trips."
When it came time for her to return to Penn and her place on the varsity team, the long-time golfer wasn't overly concerned with regaining her swing, despite not having picked up a single club in six months.
But as pro-golfer Tommy Bolt once said, "the mind messed up more shots than the body."
"I think that the hardest part for me was getting in the mindset and staying focused," Bender said. "It was very hard going back from no commitments to a big commitment. I lacked some confidence."
She used the spring tournaments to regain some of her mental toughness, finishing the 2007 season with two low rounds of 78 and the No. 3 golfer spot for the Quakers.
So the trip to Sydney had never been a matter of losing what the senior called a "very natural swing." Rather, it was about revisiting her psychological attraction to the game and using it to her advantage.
"Going abroad made me realize how much I want to do well in golf, and how much talent I have," she said. "I think I'm a better player now than I ever have been."
