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By Dave Lagarde
PGATOUR.com Correspondent

Although he has traveled throughout most of the world to ply his trade, the one excellent adventure Miguel Carballo's longed to experience began in earnest March 18th, when he boarded a jet in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and flew to Lafayette, La., with a stopover in Atlanta.

Carballo won the Movistar Panama Championship. (Badz/WireImage)

To say Carballo was entering a completely different environment was an understatement. A series of firsts started the minute he deplaned at the Lafayette Regional Airport. First time he touched soil in the U.S.A. followed by the first time he saw a golf course in this land Monday and, on Tuesday, the first time he sucked the head and pinched the tail of a boiled crawfish, a spicy Louisiana delicacy.

"Muy caliente,'' Carballo, a 27-year-old Argentine who speaks no English, said, playfully wiping his brow. "Whew!''

Thursday, Carballo played his first competitive round in America as a card-carrying member of the Nationwide Tour in the Chitimacha Louisiana Open presented Dynamic Industries.

A bit of serendipity was involved in how Carballo got to Lafayette in the first place. Had things gone according to the script in late January, Carballo would have been in Europe, playing the European PGA Tour's Challenge Tour rather than deep in the heart of Louisiana's Cajun Country.

But a funny thing happened to Carballo back then, something that altered the course of his career in professional golf.

Carballo, in sixth place on the money list of the Tour de las Americas, was one of the eight players exempted into the Nationwide Tour's season opening event, the Movistar Panama Championship in Panama City, Panama.

Talk about seizing a golden opportunity. Carballo charged from behind with a final round of five-under-par 65 on the tough-as-nails course at Panama Club de Golf, wiping out a five-shot deficit to score a two-stroke victory over Jim McGovern, Hunter Haas and Patrick Sheehan. He closed out the trio of runner-ups with a 15-foot birdie putt on the 71st hole, one of seven birdies he bagged that day.

The victory was worth $90,000 financially, but the personal gains meant so much more to the champion who got his start in golf as a caddie at age 11 in the tiny town of Bahia Blanca and was immediately hooked by the difficulty of the game. Carballo gained an immediate exemption onto the Nationwide Tour.

Nationwide Tour Director of Marketing Justin Allen, who was in Panama, recalled that Carballo, his head swirling with the possibilities, had a faraway look in his eyes when he started inquiring about how things would work once the Tour commenced in the United States.

"I had a plan all set up to play the European Challenge Tour,'' Carballo said through his caddie/interpreter Roger Herrmann. "Winning in Panama changed everything.''

So there was Carballo last week. He found himself in faraway place with a strange sounding name -- the Lafayette suburb of Broussard -- chasing his dream of earning a spot on the PGA TOUR with a growing understanding of how to get the job done.

"I've learned much this week,'' said Carballo, who lists Champions Tour player Eduardo Romero and European PGA Tour player Sebastian Fernandez among his mentors. "How to get around, how to register and I'm learning from watching some great players. For Latin American players, the goal is the PGA TOUR. The way to get there is the Nationwide Tour. You want to play against the better players.''

There was no mistaking the excitement in Carballo's voice, despite the fact that his words spilled out in a rush of Spanish and passed through Herrmann, a self-described United States Army brat who holds a master's degree in international trade but was lured away from the humdrum of the corporate world due to his devotion to golf. He is a golfer getting closer to living his dream.

It looked like Carballo was authoring another improbable chapter through the first two and a half rounds at Le Triomphe. He opened with 69-67 and had climbed to within a stroke of the lead before he was done in by a back-nine meltdown in the third round that included a triple and quadruple bogey. He faded to a tie for 77th, but still left Broussard on a natural high.

Carballo said he could not believe how warmly he was welcomed by everyone, from the PGA TOUR officials down to the tournament volunteers and locker room attendants, who amazed him because they knew his name. The men on Carballo's pro-am team followed him in the first two rounds. It made for a great first week.

Herrmann, who said he has caddied for several Latin American pros, will serve as Carballo's shepherd, guiding him throughout the United States, bridging the obvious language barriers and working out the minutia of places to stay, places to eat, as well as navigating from Point A to Point B.

On Monday, the destination was Livermore, Calif., some 1,500 miles away from Lafayette, and the Livermore Valley Wine Country Championship at Wente Vineyards. That meant more plane rides, a journey to a different part of Carballo's new world, where different terrain, a different climate and a different type of golf course awaited. As far as the newest member of the Nationwide Tour was concerned, it's all part of growing up.