Category: PGA Tour

Live by the club, die by the iron.

Live by the club, die by the iron.

2014 started with a bang, rather a swish of a golf club.  Hawaii is golf central in January.  Everyone from Barack to Vijay come to the Islands to hit our beautiful links.  My first two weeks of the year are filled with the smell of grass, the pain of walking 18 holes plus an additional 18 holes, and the sound of…well…nothing as pro golfers are too sensitive to the sound of the camera shutter or the sound of anything else.  An NBA player or Premiere League footballer can be screamed at during a free throw/kick…but a golfer?  Well, silence is the only way to oppose this noble and elite sport.

Kapalua

My week spent at the Kapalua course for the Tour of Champions in Maui was hell.  The hilly greens could easily be a ski resort and hiking is the only way to really describe covering the action on this course.  The outstanding views of Molokai are touchable from many of the holes and all considering the current weather pattern on the mainland (Jan 2014) there is no better place to be…just don’t ask my knees, thighs or calves the next day.  What a pain!  Hoisting 400mm f2.8 up hill is no fun.

My next assignment is the relatively flat Waialae Country Club course for the Sony Open staring Wednesday.  Its warmer, not as scenic but there are no hills.  However, there are many more golfers to cover and be sensitive about ensuring an errant camera shutter disrupt their concentration.

Mr. Obama, above, started my year on the first at Mid Pacific Country Club.  The club is one of the few Mr. Obama can play at where the public can actually catch a glimpse of him.  Most of the courses he now plays in Hawaii are secluded and difficult to get to but Mid Pac’s 18th hole sits on a public street across from a popular hiking trail.  Obama, hat askew, hit off the fairway onto the green and made a long putt that would make any golfer proud.  All considering he’s played about 12 rounds of golf during his 15 day Hawaiian vacation, he should be able to make all his putts!

 

No Still Photography Allowed

No Still Photography Allowed

If that were only the truth!

I just finished my nine day odyssey at the 2012 Sony Open in Hawaii.  I’ve had my complete fill of sun, pollen, sunburn, Old Spice, pesticides, idiot volunteers, and sensitive golfers.  Oh how we marched and humped the flat yet hot course out at the Waialae Country Club chasing Ryo-kun and any golfer who dared to stray into first place for those few 100 yards or so.

I’ve shot the Sony Open in Honolulu for the last several years and it never seems to get any easier with all the running around and struggles of the course and not to mention the hours of being out in the sun.  Every year at the end of the tourney, I get what I call a sun cold…better yet, a golf cold.  I have my face down in the grass for multiple days inhaling all the pollen and pesticides I could ever want in a long drawn out week.  Come wednesday, I get sneezy, congested, and irritable.  The irritability just might be my irascible personality run afoul by the incomprehensible logic of volunteer marshals, the errant golf balls from the Pro Amers, and a weighty 400mm F2.8 lens digging into my neck muscles.

 Golf is one of those sports that just begs to ask why anyone would pursue such a unreasonable game where a putt depends on whether the grains of the grass are facing towards or away from you, or whether your ball will slice or hook on the based on how your hands grip the driver.  How ironic that basketball players get booed and screamed at when doing free throws from the line but golfers can’t take even a bright shirt if its in their eye sight.  A gentleman’s sport, indeed!  Especially when you hear certain golfers swearing like sailors when a ball goes off course or a putt doesn’t fall just like they envisioned.

Regardless of my own prejudice of the game (note…I’ve been know to roam the cloudy cool hills of the Pali golf course so I’ve no real complaints) I truly enjoy shooting the sport.  The anticipation, the surprises, the reactions are all so great.  Its completely boring most of the time as so many of the players possess that calmness the sport demands which doesn’t allow them to showboat or hoot and holler when sinking an eagle.  Sure you get the fist pump but you’ll never get the true “jube” shots you’ll find in other sports.

Whether its pure madness to follow the Japanese sensation Ryo Ishikawa, who I truly think looks like an real life anime character, I’ll never truly understand.  I think its the pack mentality of rushing around with a dozen or so photographers from the US and Japan, all struggling to capture that unique image of the golfer in pure rapture or total disbelief in his ability to make a two inch ball land in just the right spot.  Even though you can’t communicate with each other due to a language barrier or a sensitive golf caddie, we share the same sweat, pain, sunburns, and struggle.  One big unified mass chasing a bunch of dopes chasing a little white ball.

I do have a favorite shot of the week and its of this guy David Hearn hitting out of the bunker on the ninth green.  I just found his expression of fear, worry, hope, and more fear more appealing than most of the stuff I shot that day.  He fizzled at the end of the tournament allowing moustached Johnson Wagner to win all the marbles.  Do I dare say Mr. Wagner’s prowlness is due to his hairy lip?  We’ll never know.