Masters Week Photo Blog Part 4

Well, Round 1 is over. About an hour and a half later than planned, but it's over. After a fog delay, golfers were finally teeing off from number 1 at about 9am or so.

The first day is always a crap shoot when it comes to determining who to follow and who might be the day's leader or who will have a string of 4 or 5 birdies early on only to choke later on the 16th.

Therefore, we go for the usual suspects (Tiger, Mickelson, Zach Johnson, Vijay Singh, Gary Player, Fred Couples) and hope that through good communication down the stretch, we can catch up to any different leaders (in today's case Rose and Immelman.)

This is where radios are an absolute necessity out on the course. They allow us to stay in constant communication with our editors, in case they need something in particular, with our runners, so we can direct them where to go (to reserve a spot at the next hole, since photographers are NOT allowed inside the ropes) and with the other staff photographers so we can coordinate hole coverage.

We rent Nextel/Sprint phones so that (in theory) they aren't affected by the terrain much as normal walkie-talkie radios are constantly losing signal when you're in a valley. Each photographer gets a phone, along with their runner and two for the editors so that makes a total of 12 phones.

Another usual occurence is what we call Tiger Watch. It's the phenomenon that happens whenever and wherever Tiger Woods is playing golf. Photographers, patrons, TV, everybody is following Tiger. It makes it difficult, mostly because you have to be sure to jump ahead, or send a runner ahead get the shot. Otherwise, you're likely to get to the hole where the people are 20 deep and you can't get a decent shot from any vantage point, long lens or not.

The photo below is from Tuesday's Tiger Watch on hole 13 when the sun came out for 6 minutes on a very cloudy morning. That hole is probably one of my favorites, along with 16.

And finally, someone asked about how many photographers, or "competition" there is. Honestly, not quite as many as you'd think. As the local paper, we get 5 credentials. The Associated Press gets 5 as well, while Reuters and Getty Images have several, but I don't know the exact number. I've seen 3 SI guys, but there are probably more and several from regional papers, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the State from Columbia, S.C. There are several photographers from national and international golf magazines and that's about it. I don't want to venture a guess, but all I know is that credentials are very tightly regulated. With the Masters, it's all about preserving the tradition (hence not letting us inside the ropes, keeps the experience more natural for the patrons).

That's about it for Thursday. And tomorrow will likely be another 14 hour day. It's funny because at the beginning of the week, the course and event is new again, but by Friday morning, you start dreaming about the "beep beep" from the phone radios and your house starts looking unfamiliar because you're spending so much time at the course. But we love it all the same.