The knock on the Old Course is that it’s beautiful to play (indeed it is), it’s chock full of history and therefore an Open there automatically has some magical undertones (it does), but from a photographic perspective it is, in local parlance, pure shite. Sacrilegious as it may sound, that, too, is the absolute truth. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that, with the flat terrain and the unfortunate placement of TV cranes, scaffolds, and grandstands, it’s one of the ugliest golf courses for pictures, once you get past the first and 18th holes. And with its classic out-and-back layout, the fairways are always roped to one side (the outside) only, leaving too long of a throw to opposite holes and to most greens. But hey, you do what you can, right? Someone once told me that a photographer’s job is to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. And so it is here.

The real challenge of the week, though, was to produce this Gigapan image of the 18th hole. It was photographed from the balcony of the MacDonald Rusacks Hotel with a big assist both from the hotel’s management and Golf Digest Director of Photography Christian Iooss. More specifics can be found on my Sunday blog post, but here it is:

No pressure, right?

I’ve written more about my work with the device–in fact, I’ve devoted an entire section of this site–here if you’re interested. But for the purposes of this week’s project, it entailed getting access to a balcony that overlooks the 18th hole at the MacDonald Rusacks Hotel, setting up the system (A Gigapan Epic Pro unit, Canon EOS 7D, and EF 70-200mm f4 lens), and letting it run while I left to photograph the champion arriving at the 18th green.

In addition to being an amazing hotel steeped in the tradition, lore, and personality of the town of St. Andrews (and one I’d highly recommend looking into if you ever need a place to stay while there), the staff at the Rusacks is top-notch. I’d contacted hotel’s general manager a couple of months earlier, and then, once on site, met with its sales and marketing director, and they could not have been more helpful or professional. I explained that I needed to clamp a camera rig to a balcony railing, and that I, or someone helping me, would need to access the balcony intermittently, all on what is probably the noisiest, most hectic day they’ll ever see.

That's the Gigapan unit with camera and lens attached, in operation (it's next to my backup, single-frame remote, mounted just in case). If you look closely, you can also find Christian on the balcony, third head from the left.

They gave their blessing, and at 7 a.m. on Sunday, so as to stay out of the way of the staff and guests, I began setting up the system and shooting test shots. The entire image comprises 512 frames, shot across 32 columns and sixteen rows, with an elapsed time of approximately 30 minutes. When the leaders were on about the 13th hole on Sunday afternoon, I made my way up to the balcony, double-checked the positioning and setup of the unit, and started it on its way. I then left for my predetermined spot at the back of the 18th green (if you look carefully you can spot me in the gigapan image–I’m wearing a blue and black jacket and looking at the back of my camera) to cover the winning putt. In order to get the timing right, Christian positioned himself out of the way on the balcony in the afternoon during the final shot and paused and re-started the unit to ensure that the players were on the green at the appropriate time during the shot. As I told him later, he nailed the timing, even getting it so that the flagstick was still in the hole.

All in all, I’d call it a successful shot. Feel free to linger and browse around a little!

Years ago I thought that was a very altruistic approach. I mean, we should all have the opportunity, at least once per tournament, to walk eighteen holes with the greatest golfer who ever lived, right?

Only lately have I come to realize that it’s not that at all, and that the situation needs to be turned on its head. The reason we all get Tiger at least once isn’t because it’s good for the person who’s covering him–it’s to give the other guys a break. Forget sharing the wealth. It’s only fair to spread the hell around a little.

Fair to spread the hell of massive, crushing galleries, of being cursed at, spit on, pushed, and pulled by spectators who, unlike those who comprise your typically knowledgable, “normal” Open galleries, apparently have very little regard for the game or its traditions (to say nothing of us photographers, but that’s neither here nor there). Of having the rules for coverage changed on us at the last second without warning–of being able to sit in a particular spot all day long, only to be told two minutes before His Greatness appears that we can’t be there. Of goon-squad security guards and uniformed police officers packing pistols in the middle of the fairway. Of the need to operate with an even more heightened sense of awareness that even the slightest misstep could cost you a tongue-lashing from The Man himself or, worse yet, his caddie, even if the real culprit was the guy next to you with his Rebel XT who can’t figure out how to turn off the autofocus beep. Following Tiger is about as stressful an assignment as one can have on the golf course. And today was my day.

Well, tomorrow’s Sunday. The really important one. And I have a special little project to work on that you’ll hear all about later…

We had all, of course, planned ahead, and I took up a position in a photo tower overlooking the 17th green, for a wide shot of the bridge, the town, and the R&A clubhouse. I got there early, figuring it would be packed. It wasn’t. My good friend Fred Vuich had gotten there before me, and for the next hour or so we waited, freezing our asses off and trying to talk to each other above a howling wind. Thanks to the weather delay earlier, it was 9:45 p.m. and barely bright enough to see–let alone shoot–by the time Tom crossed the bridge. In a stroke of good fortune, I managed to catch a few strobes from the photographers who were lined up in front of the bridge for the occasion.

On a related weather note, can we talk about something else? It rained today.

Let me amend that: It rained sideways today.

It was, in short, typical Scottish golf weather. Cold and chilly in the morning, with a little mist that gave way to intermittent showers, and then all hell broke loose. The wind kicked up and a cold, driving rain, its heavy drops pushed sideways by the gusts, hammered the course. And then, the sun popped out, for a little while anyways, until the clouds rolled back in. And then, as the evening arrived, the sun broke through the clouds one last time, bathing the 18th hole in a glorious, golden light.

It was the kind of day when you had no choice but to leave the rain gear on all day, because you just never knew. Okay, here comes the shameless plug: Thank heaven for Think Tank rain covers.

Here’s what I love about these things: You can leave them on all day. They go on in a second without having to disconnect the lens from the body, sure, but here’s the problem with that: In Scotland, you may not have a second. And today we didn’t. Once the covers are on, its just as easy to shoot with them as if they were off. The peace of mind that that offers (not to mention the ability to not miss a shot as you scramble to find shelter to put covers on, as was the case in the past) cannot be underestimated.

I remember a few years ago, shooting the British Open at Hoylake, we had a similar day. I was very excited to test out a new cover for my 400 f 2.8 that Think Tank had sent me to evaluate. It rained sideways that day, too, and while the covers repelled everything, I noticed a few flaws. That night I e-mailed Mike Sturm and Doug Murdoch at Think Tank, and told them what I thought. The cover was fantastic, I said. But it needed a flap to cover the eyepiece, and they needed to work on some kind of cap for the front of the lens, too.

Now, I’m sure I couldn’t have been the only one who noticed this. But a week later, a package arrived at my door. Mike had sent along a cap he’d devised, and asked me to give it a go. Fast forward a year or so. the Think Tank Hydrophobia for the 70-200 comes out–with an integrated eyepiece flap and a drop-away cover for the front element. These guys listen. they implement. And it shows in their finished product. When I took my 70-200 cover out of the box earlier this year, I e-mailed Mike and told him that, just after looking at it and not even testing it, I think he may have just created the perfect camera rain cover. This week, the true test occurred. In two days of hard rain so far, I’ve had zero equipment failures. None.

In fact, I haven’t even been worried. That’s how confident I am in their stuff.

Every. Single. Time.

It seems oh-so-important on the Thursday of any major, but especially this one: the Open Championship at the Home of Golf, the historic implications of what might happen in four days’ time banging around in my head about as loudly as the alarm clock that just informed me it’s either 5 a.m. in Scotland or, according to my head, midnight back home. I haul my jet-lagged rear end out of bed, discover, to my dismay, that there’s no coffee maker (let alone coffee) in our rental house, and yet still manage to navigate the winding road from Cupar to St. Andrews in time. My brain is already fried not only by the time difference but then, too, by a sunrise that seems to have occurred at three in the morning. But whatever fog I’m in, I tell myself that I have to be there. Because whatever might happen this week, it all starts today.

I have to get the “First ball.”

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Nobody’s told me I have to do it. Nobody’s expecting it. Hell, I don’t even really want to do it, but there’s something nagging in my head that makes me feel the need to go, to stand out on the golf course with a bunch of other brave souls in the bleakest hours of the morning, and make sure I get a picture of a guy hitting a tee shot. One that looks just like any other tee shot. Without a caption to tell you, you’d never know the difference. Hell, if it weren’t for the fact that this was the very first shot of this year’s Open, this picture probably wouldn’t make it past my first edit. Call it a work ethic if you want. Call it guilt. Mix the two together and call me a Calvinist. Or just call me stupid.

You see, it happens every time. When it’s hit, that first ball seems like it’s the most critical shot of the tournament, a piece of living history. There won’t ever be another one. And for my part, it proves to me that I was there. I wasn’t late. I didn’t miss it. I feel good about myself.

And then, about an hour later, I start running into people I know in the press room. They haven’t unpacked yet, but they see me all ready and raring to go. Cameras out, rain pants on, wide awake and alert from the five or six cups of coffee I’ve already downed. “Man, you’re here early,” they’ll say. Or offer some variation thereof.

“Had to get the first ball,” I say.

“Really? Why?”

It’s at that moment that I realize that that’s a damned good question.

Well it’s been a while since the last post but that doesn’t mean life hasn’t been busy–on the road for eight straight weeks of baseball for Sports Illustrated, portraits for S.I. and Golf Magazine; golf for S.I. and Golf World, a portrait shoot for Nike, and even a little bit of golf instructional thrown in for Golf Digest. I hadn’t seen Tiger Woods in almost 2 months, since The Players Championship, but last weekend we were both outside of Philadelphia at Aronimink Golf Club for the AT&T National. I was enjoying myself immensely, what with being back on the east coast, in a city I really enjoy, and better yet on a beautiful, old-school golf course that’s the antithesis of the housing-developments-with-fairways that the Tour loves to frequent these days. As for Tiger? I think it’s pretty safe to say that, work-wise, I had a better week than he did.

And so we wait eagerly; Kim and his entourage of three close friends (two of whom, his caddie and personal assistant, live with him) and three dogs lounge around the living room of what might be the ultimate bachelor pad, complete with the obligatory giant flat screen televisions, a shuffleboard table, and downstairs, a not-so-obligatory “movie room” with a $60,000 sound system and four queen-sized beds. As “SportsCenter” blares in a continuous loop, my assistant, Will Rutledge, and I fret about, marking time by coming up with one shot after another, setting lights, finding angles, pulling Anthony off of his bean-bag chair for five minutes of shooting here and there. We’re all waiting for the piece de resistance, but for different reasons.

Fortunately, Kim is a great guy who, in addition to taking the whole car delivery thing in stride, had no problem letting us stick around–I’m beginning to think he wants the car in the shot as much as we do, and my suspicions are confirmed when I overhear him on the phone with the truck driver: “You’re where? How long? Look, I need it here tonight for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot!” He’s extremely gracious, offering us the run of the house, but I’m content to try and keep out of the way lest we overstay our welcome. When the car does arrive some four hours behind schedule, via a giant yellow car carrier, Kim is like a kid on Christmas day. The light is fading fast, but we’ve already given up on that–Will has spent the past two hours rigging strobes and a suspending an overhead crossbar camera mount in the driveway, and by now I’m more hoping than resigned that we’ll have to shoot this in the dark. After what seems like hours, the car is backed off the truck, and Kim hops in. He motions for the others to do the same–he bought this particular car, he says, because all four of them could fit in it–and guns the engine. The car disappears around the corner of a quiet (well, until now at least) Dallas residential street. We’ll get our wish. It will be dark by the time they get back.

For the photographically inclined, the technical details:

I’m a huge proponent of the philosophy that “if you bring everything, you forget nothing,” and so we showed up for the shoot loaded for bear. I threw everything I had into the car, and rented a few things that I didn’t. But I’m also of the mind that just because something is on the truck, doesn’t mean you have to use it. The various shots from this assignment drew on a couple of different approaches, from using every single light, stand, and reflector we had (the car shot), to a couple of strobes in an outdoor setting (the pool shot), to an added, single continuous light source (the theater shot), to simply taking advantage of existing light and backgrounds (the individual portraits).

The car shot: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24-105mm lens mounted on a 12′ crossbar some 15′ in the air with the car parked underneath. Lit with Profoto heads in Elinchrom Octabanks on two sides and bounced fill in the front and back. Camera tethered to a MacBook Pro and fired remotely.

The movie theater: Available light augmented by a Profoto head with a beauty dish and 40-degree grid aimed at Kim, using only the modeling light as an ambient light source. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16-35mm lens.

The pool: 2 bare bulb Profoto heads balanced for ambient exposure. Polarizer. Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Shuffleboard and the living room shots: All available light, which was abundant thanks to a wall of windows at the rear of the house. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm 1.4 lens (shuffleboard) and 16-35mm (living room).

Hallway portrait: Canon 5D Mark II, 50mm 1.4 lens, with a single Profoto head bounced off of a warm, terra cotta-colored wall at camera right, balanced slightly above ambient exposure, which was utilized for fill light.

Tight portraits: Ambient window light against a textured, painted wall in the dining room. Canon EOS 5D Mark II and 85mm f1.2 lens, pretty much wide open.

But ask me where I’m most comfortable, which course suits my eye and affords me the chance to not only enjoy my work and to take my creativity on rejuvinative walk on a course with great light in gorgeous setting, but also to enjoy myself? I’ll take Harbour Town, thank you very much.

The tournament is known among the players for its low-stress, relaxing atmosphere and as a welcome change from the high-wire act of the previous week’s festivities in Augusta. For me, it’s a chance to work at a great course, with perfect weather, and in a great place–lots of beach for my customary run in the morning, good restaurants, and nice people. It’s always easy to fall into a routine at a place you go back to year after year, and many times it’s to your detriment. Not here.

In Hilton Head it’s the routine that I look forward to the most. Up early, I like to get to the course before dawn so that I can be ready to take advantage of early morning mist, which eventually gives way to the sunlight that streams through the Spanish moss  hanging from the trees. Eventually I’ll make it to the fifth tee, where for an hour or so the morning sun looks as if it’s been piped in off of a movie set, warm and direct and still low enough to get under caps and visors as players hit from a tee box that’s mercifully uncluttered by ropes or marshals in the background. By ten o’clock the light is gone, replaced by harsh shadows that are only worth shooting in if you have a truly pressing need. I don’t–at least at the beginning of the week–so I’ll head back to the hotel for a 4- or 5-mile run, follow that up with a deservedly indulgent brunch of chocolate chip pancakes and eggs at Stack’s Pancake House, and head back to the course in the afternoon, waiting for the sun to settle down again. Maybe I’ll head to my favorite tee, the 14th (see below). Or perhaps I might use the afternoon to try something a little different (that’s below, as well). Either way I’ll wind up back at the hotel just before dark, relax for a bit before making the one-mile walk to one of my two favorite restaurants on the island, the Santa Fe Cafe or Alfred’s, depending on whether I’m in the mood for Southwestern or German, enjoy a glass of wine, and take a slow stroll back under the stars, contemplating sleep and the day to follow. As covering golf goes, it really is about as good as it gets.

UP IN THE AIR…

If you follow golf at all in newspapers and magazines, no doubt you’ve seen what’s arguably biggest visual cliche on the PGA Tour: The view from behind the 18th tee at Harbour Town, with the lighthouse looming high above the grandstands on the 18th green. (If you haven’t, I’ve conveniently provided this year’s version of it to the right). Everybody shoots it, every year, if for no other reason that if you don’t, the folks back at the office are going to wonder where it is.

Earlier in the week, Sports Illustrated picture editor Miriam Marseu and I discussed the possibility of getting something a little different of the 18th. Nestled hard along Calibogue Sound, the way the fairway is roped off allows photographers only to pass down the right (land-ward) side, shooting in to the water (and the sun) and making for some extremely boring images. What if, we wondered, there was a way to shoot it from the opposite vantage point, with the sun at my back and the water in the foreground? Somehow this would necessitate getting out on the sound. Fortunately, I had come to a place where help in that regard–or really, in any regard–was abundant.

The folks in the media center at Harbour Town are among the best on tour, and not just because they rise far above their peers by stocking the press tent with the New York Times. They are always willing to help with any request, be it for a tee time nearby or, in my case, for a boat. For example: I asked Carol Bartholomew, who helps run the media center, if she could give me a lead on a boat to charter for Thursday afternoon. She immediately offered that her husband had one, and volunteered him for duty if he was free that afternoon.

He wasn’t, but he knew someone who was, and within minutes I was set up for the afternoon. However, Carol continued to work the phones on my behalf, eventually contacting Brooke McCullough at H2O Sports, a water sports/charter operation at the marina, which is a five minute walk from the press tent. (Have I mentioned I love this place?) “Heck,” he told her “I’ll put him up in a parasail if he wants.” Carol relayed the message–jokingly, I presume. A light bulb went off above my head. A potentially dim one, but a bulb nonetheless. I can’t say I’d ever shot pictures from a parasail before. Come to think of it, I cant say I’d ever been up in a parasail before.

And so it came to pass that on Thursday afternoon I went out on a boat–the pictures weren’t very successful as the angles and elevations were all wrong, but we wouldn’t find that out without trying, right?–and on Friday and Saturday I strapped two cameras around my neck, hauled my ass into a sling (literally), and for 20 glorious minutes each day hovered above the sound with nothing but 800 feet of rope and a knot keeping me from fluttering away to Savannah.

Who says this job doesn’t have its good points?

WARNING: PHOTO-GEEKY DISCUSSION TO FOLLOW FOR THE NEXT 4 PARAGRAPHS…

The 14th tee at Harbour Town is one of my favorite tee boxes in all of golf, in that it gives me a rare opportunity to try something a little different–a mirror lens. Instantly recognizable for the “donut” effect in its backgrounds created by its optical construction, mirror lenses are literal dinosaurs, but when used under the right circumstances can create some beautiful images.

You don’t see mirror lenses much anymore. Part of that is due to their near-obsolescence–Nikon and Canon don’t produce them anymore, and finding a sharp one on the used market is at times a daunting proposition. But if you can find one–mine is a 1980s-era Nikkor 500mm f8, with a Canon EF adapter allowing me to use it on a 5D Mark II–it can lend a once-in-a-while, be-careful-not-to-overdo-it bit of creativity to shooting.

By their very nature, though, mirror lenses make them hard to over-use. First of all, they’re manual focus, and, at f8 on today’s crappy plastic focusing screens, afford an extremely low-percentage shot. Second, it takes a convergence of a number of factors to make an image “work” and get the full effect out of the lens: namely, the image must be back-lit, but not to strongly as to cause flare, the background can’t be solid, thus allowing the back-light to “dapple” through it, which will in turn produce the “donuts” in out-of-focus areas, and finally, since the size of those rings decreases with both film-to-subject and subject-to-background distance, the right balance needs to be struck between both of those elements. Too close on either, and the rings will be too large to even recognize as such; too far and they’ll be so small as to be more distracting than anything else.

But the fourteenth at Harbour Town? Once two o’clock rolls around, it’s perfect for the rest of the afternoon. In fact, I usually leave the mirror lens at home these days, but I bring it on this trip specifically for that one spot.

NOT A PHOTO GEEK? YOU CAN START READING AGAIN.

The tournament ended in bizarre fashion, with Brian Davis sinking a birdie putt on the last hole to force a playoff with Jim Furyk. But in one of those crazy instances that demonstrates how the seemingly arcane rules of golf, and their dependence on self-enforcement, set the sport apart from just about every other form of competition, Davis called a penalty on himself for touching a loose impediment in a hazard, effectively forfeiting the playoff an handing Furyk the victory. If the post-tournament commentaries are any indication, Davis’ actions probably did him more favors in terms of his reputation among fans and peers and, one would hope, karma, than any win possibly could have (Michelle Wie, are you listening?). Let’s hope it’s not the last we’ve seen of him. I have a feeling it won’t be.

Next up for me: the LPGA’s Tres Maria Championship in Morelia, Mexico next week. Lorena Ochoa’s impending retirement and press conference on Friday (more on that as it happens) should make things a bit of a zoo. And a typically un-walkable Jack Nicklaus design should make things even less fun. We’ll see.

I’m not a golf course architecture aficionado by any means but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from 15 years of walking golf courses while covering the pros it’s this: any golf course that has Jack Nicklaus’ name in the slot next to the words “Course Architect” ought to have the following warning posted before the first tee, in the same manner as those ski slopes with the double black diamonds:

“Warning: This golf course was neither conceived nor designed with the thought that anyone actually enjoys playing golf and walking from shot to shot, or from a green to the next tee. If you play this course and do not take a cart, you are an idiot and you deserve any health problems that result from your poor decision-making skills, including your untimely death.”

For the players at this week’s Cap Cana Championship, this was not a problem. This is the Champions Tour, after all; part of the entitlement package of playing on a tour that a colleague of mine (I’ve long since forgotten who, but I wish I could remember) once called “Day Care for Millionaires” is that you get to plop your over-50 year-old bones in a cart as much as you want. But the press is still the press, regardless of the tour we’re following or the course we’re on. Hoofing it on foot would have to do.

Manuel De Los Santos on the driving range followng Saturday's second round.

I didn’t have to go far to get my favorite image of the week, though. Returning to the media center following Saturday’s second round, I found an e-mail from my editor at Sports Illustrated, Miriam Marseu, asking me to try and get some “on course” portraits (that’s golf-photo speak for long-lens, available light, waist-up shots)  of Bernhard Langer for a feature. Play had finished for the day, but I reasoned that those kinds of shots are best found on the driving range, anyway, so I figured I’d stroll the hundred or so yards over to the practice area and see if he was out there.

He wasn’t. And that was a good thing, because what I literally stumbled upon was something that I wouldn’t have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes. Instead, I found Manuel De Los Santos, a 25 year-old former baseball prodigy who took up golf after he lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident at age 18. Standing on one leg and taking full, powerful swings that sounded so pure–those of you who’ve hung around professional golfers practicing know exactly what sound I’m talking about–he muscled shot after shot down the range with a stroke that torqued his entire body from the start of the swing to its finish, taking a brief hop as he made contact, and spinning into his follow-through to finish perfectly balanced on the the tips of his toes in a manner that defied credulity. In between shots I turned my head to see that Corey Pavin had stopped practicing for a minute to watch, and was shaking his head in disbelief.

Golf carts are a staple for players on the Champions Tour, as Fred Couples (and caddie Joe LaCava) can attest...

But you can’t make your game story pictures on the range, and so for the rest of the assignment, a hike was in order. I was able to receive a major assist from Sports Illustrated’s Miguel Saavedra, who flew down to help out. He knew what he was in for; I’d told him that I was two weeks removed from some minor surgery and under doctor’s orders not to carry or lift anything over 20 pounds, so he was going to be doing a lot of schlepping. I should note that the physical outlay for a golf photographer is nothing to sneeze at; walking 18 holes a day (and this on a Nicklaus course–see above) with a load easily in excess of 50 pounds is not exactly a walk in the park, regardless of whether your GPS tells you you’re somewhere in the middle of paradise. But for some reason he thought this sounded like fun and agreed to leave the office for a couple of days and come along. On so many levels beyond the physical help, I was glad he did.

Eventual winner Fred Couples gouges out an approach shot on the third hole.

I know enough Spanish to get by–barely–but I’d never fully appreciated the enormous difference having someone fluent in the language to translate and communicate could be. Let’s start with my favorite subject: food. There was surprisingly little to choose from at our resort/hotel (there, I said it; I won’t sugar coat to make you think we stayed at a Motel 6). But the front desk staff highly recommended a little place called La Yola which, they said, was a 10-minute walk down the road.

(As a brief aside, one thing I did learn last week is that in the Dominican Republic, everything takes ten minutes. How far to the hotel from the airport? Ten minutes. How long until the shuttle gets here? Ten minutes. How far is it to the golf course? Ten minutes. You get the idea.)

Inspired by dreams of fantastic food and a nice leisurely beach-side stroll on a beautiful star-lit evening, Miguel, myself and S.I. writer Damon Hack headed out down the path, as instructed. They don’t mark things very well in Punta Cana, so when, ten minutes later, we arrived at a gated entry way leading to a massive, multi-winged, thatch-roofed edifice with towering floor-to-ceiling windows, dimly glowing lights and soothing music echoing back to the street through the walled-in parking lot, we knew we had arrived. We wandered in, past a couple of parked cars, through an open foyer and into an atrium surrounded by glassed-in rooms and filled with tropical foliage. Walking between the rough-hewn tree trunks that provided frames for the buildings and shade for the walkways, I began to get an uneasy feeling. The place was empty. Were we looking for dinner? Or Colonel Kurtz? I half expected a stoned-out-of-his-gourd Dennis Hopper to greet us with a couple of Nikon F’s hanging around his neck.

And then we walked past the kitchen, on the other side of a wall of windows. It was enormous and pristine, and stocked with every gleaming stainless steel appliance that would make a foodie like myself drool on sight, which is what I started doing. The staff of four or five was busy cleaning away–which I thought odd, considering we had a reservation and all, and that they certainly wouldn’t be closing up for the night.

Miguel must’ve found it odd, too, because he stuck his head in the door and said something to the people inside. I think I saw most of them smile, if not laugh outright, but when he pulled his head out the door he was doing neither.

“Dude,” he said, “this is someone’s house.”

The emphasis he placed on that last word reflected enough incredulity for the three of us.

The kitchen staff was very accommodating and sympathetic to our plight; one of them even gave us a ride to our actual destination. Had we walked it, it would have been–you guessed it–about another ten minutes down the road…

The next day Miguel suggested at breakfast that we ought to try something different. After all, we were in a beautiful location, and as we’d discussed before, the location was the story. And it was Saturday, which meant we still had a full day of shooting on the course to follow tomorrow. Why not take a chance at the ultimate “sense of place” picture and rent a helicopter for half an hour? Why not, indeed. I mean, we’re in a foreign country, it’s Saturday morning, we have no idea where to get a helicopter from, and we need it sometime in the next four hours or so.

Aerial view of the Punta Espada Golf Club, Cap Cana, Dominican Republic.

For Miguel, this meant about 10 minutes of chatting up the hotel concierge, a phone call or two, and an appointment for one o’clock that afternoon. That meant we could still go to the course, shoot a couple of holes of scenics, and be back in time to meet our ride to the helipad. The helicopter ride was as much fun as they ever are; it was a Robinson 44, which is about as close as you can get to putting a couple of lawn chairs under a big propeller and slapping a tail rotor on it, and to tell you the truth I was secretly relieved when we were told that it would take several days and piles of paper work to get the necessary government approval to take the doors off. And it was a good thing they stayed on, too–our pilot, Felipe, practically fell out of his seat when, about 700 feet above the Caribbean, he asked–and we told him–who we were taking pictures for.

As we flew back inland, I listened over the headset as Miguel briefly recounted our previous night’s restaurant hunt to Felipe, and inquired as to the identity of the house’s owner, who’s name he’d gotten from the staff.

Felipe broke into a wide grin. “He’s only the wealthiest man in the country.”

On Sunday, a funny thing happened at what was supposed to be a glorified exhibition of golfers in their golden years out for a walk in the park: a real, bona-fide golf tournament broke out, with a final threesome of Fred Couples, Nick Price, and Corey Pavin slugging it out in a shootout that rivaled anything I’ve ever witnessed on the golf beat. I mean, I was happy enough to have been granted a paid weekend in paradise without a care other than bringing back a couple of nice pictures. Who’d have thought I’d get to witness some quality competition as well?

These photographs of Tiger Woods are available for editorial licensing. Click here to view lightbox.

Sure, it’s a little bit surprising that the hiatus was so brief, and you can’t blame the cynics who wonder what happened to what everyone thought would be an extended recovery and rehabilitation period, but can you really blame him? Just a look at the venues for this year’s major championships should be reason enough; there is no way to think that a man who has his sights set on surpassing Nicklaus’ record of 18 would miss the chance to play on three courses where he has won majors, and won big, in the past–Augusta, Pebble Beach, and St. Andrew’s.

Then there’s Augusta itself. Why the Masters? As this Mike Peters cartoon suggests, not for nothing did Team Tiger seek out the man who shoveled information to the press during Bush 43’s “Mission Accomplished” campaign to orchestrate this comeback. Augusta is without a doubt the most restrictive place in terms of media coverage–credentials needed to have been applied for months ago (sorry, TMZ, Radar, E!, and the rest); no one is permitted inside the ropes; and the general fear of transgression resulting in credential revocation is a constant back-of-mind concern. “Normal” rules of golf coverage don’t apply here, which makes The Masters the perfect spot for the return of a personality bigger than the game itself and a brand and image that needs to be tightly guarded, protected, and controlled.

I’m going to leave the hand-wringing over what this means about overshadowing the Masters as a tournament and whether Tiger’s presence there is fair to the event or the players to people who write about (and worry about) this stuff for a living. But what does it mean for photographers? For the moment, not much. The same rules and restrictions that make Augusta an ideal cocoon for Tiger’s return also make it a manageable place for golf photographers to work. Nothing ever changes there, and I can’t see how this year would be any exception. That which we’ve often cursed may this year have become a blessing, although my brethren might be cautioned to exercise a bit more care around Steve Williams on the 11th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th holes. Of course that doesn’t mean that the rest of the year–especially Tiger’s first tournament after Augusta–isn’t going to be an absolute freaking zoo, but for now? Same Augusta, same rules, different year. Simple as that.

As for me, unless someone has a better idea, I plan on spending my Masters Sunday either in the third base photo well at The Ballpark in Arlington as the Rangers play the Mariners or, barring that, on my sofa with Jake in my lap, an ice cold Shiner Bock in hand, and the high-fructose musings of CBS’ resident Augusta sycophants dripping from my television set. And if it’s the latter, I really do hope that now that he’s old enough to appreciate it, Jake gets to watch the greatest golfer ever to play the game win a Masters.

Of course, I’m going to have to choose my words a little more carefully than I had originally planned the first time he asks me, “Daddy, who’s Tiger Woods?”