With my pass in hand and my rented lens in my bag, I headed out to the tournament on Friday morning fairly early and found myself in and out of the media tent before 9am, after grabbing a tee sheet and finding out where everyone was that I wanted to see today.
I was not only looking for specific golfers today, I was looking for fun interactions and shots of the players, the fans and anything in between. The crowds were pretty thin on Friday morning, which surprised me. I’d love to have taken a day off just to go and check out the tournament if I wasn’t out photographing it.
I caught a quick glimpse of JT Poston on the 17th hole; a par 3 with a pond on the left and the viewing boxes on the back and right. I tested out my media pass and walked into the stands (King’s Corner) directly behind the 17th and set up for this shot. I’d definitely look into getting an even longer lens if this was an angle I wanted to stick with and try to capture more of. This was at 400mm and has been cropped in pretty good.
After sitting on the 17th for a bit and watching a few groups come through, I got to catch Eric van Rooyen (former MN Gopher golfer) on the 17th tee as well.
The inside of some of the stand were pretty plush; air conditoned, bars, food and special apparel for the employees. The 3M tent was no diferent; they had an amazing space and I would have loved to stay in there for most of the tournament, as it was located right behind the 18th green. Which reminds me; if anyone as one of the science 3M Open hats (with the “elements” on the side of “Go” and “Lf”) I’d love to get one.
Back to the golf.
I wanted to see more of Joel Dahmen. I assumed he would have made the cut but of course I was wrong, so the only shot I got of Joel was his tee shot off of the 1st tee. Joel had the 12:10pm on the 1st tee, which was the first group of the afternoon rounds. Shooting from this side of the tee box ended up being a challenge as I always seemed to get the garbage bags in every shot.
Akshay Bhatia has been on my list of people to photograph for a while. He’s got game and he’s super skinny (like I was at one point, but has a 1000% better swing than I’ve ever had). He was quiet but played well.
Akshay was paired up with previous 3M Open winners Lee Hodges and Tony Finau. I was hoping it was a sign of something to come, but unfortunately for Akshay he didn’t win.
Sahith Theegala was also on my list. Apparently he was on many peoples’ list, as I saw a few Theegala jerseys out there and one young man sporting a shirt that said “Theegala” across the front of it with about 25 different shots of Sahith’s face on it. I didn’t get a photo of the superfan, but I did see Sahith talk to the young man after his round, so he did see the shirt.
At some point, I thought it was a good idea to swap out the 100-400 for my 24-70. I really should have brought my 70-200mm lens along as it would have fit perfectly between the shorter lens and the long one. So while I’m not 100% happy with the shots, I was able to get some photos that weren’t cropped in so tight due to the length of the lens I had.
I believe this is Nick Dunlap off of the 8th tee.
And at that point, I called it a day. I’d been out on the course for about 7 hours again at this point and figured I would use it as a break for getting ready to come in early on Saturday. I’ve been extremely lucky with parking this year and did get passes to park in group “B”, which is behind the clubhouse. Getting there early is key to having a very short walk into the entrance and then over to the media tent, which I did on Friday-Sunday.
My Saturday and Sunday recaps will come in the next couple of weeks.
Well done DP!