07.20.06

2006 Jamie Farr LPGA

Posted in Photos, Words at 11:12 pm by photodan

“What was I thinking?” That question kept recurring every few minutes as I was in my fourth day of covering the 2006 Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic golf tournament for the Associated Press.

Either I’m a glutton for punishment or it’s because a prominent doctor told me I could get the equivalent of a year’s exercise in those four days and slack off for the rest of the year. Of course, that physician may have been a hallucination because I’m not sure what a prominent doctor would be doing floating above the ninth green wearing a wetsuit and a trucker hat that says “Honk if you love bratwurst.” Real or not, it sounded good to me at the time.

I suppose I made the decision because the Jamie Farr tournament is always interesting and challenging.

My work environment involved thousands of diverse people coming together to watch a group of very talented and famous athletes, including UT golf team member Tammy Clelland, with the added facet of Jamie Farr sneaking around just waiting for an opportunity to turn on the charm. When I arrived each morning, I never knew who was more likely to show up in a dress.

The fans were fascinating to watch. There were people displaying national flags painted on their chests, collecting autographs from foreign golfers on a shirt with a globe printed on it, and even one man offering a marriage proposal to a golfer via poster board. Her caddy actually wrote his number down. I’ll let you decide whether it was for a return call or a potential stalker list.

This year, the hot and wet weather put a bizarre twist on just about everything. With the ground already saturated, rains during the week turned a normally mild Ten Mile Creek into white water rapids that overflowed its banks on two separate occasions, closed tee boxes, and forced officials to ferry golfers from hole to hole in golf carts. (Electric golf carts — yikes!) Apparently Sylvania, in its jealousy of Toledo’s fine transportation system, thought it would follow suit and have only one bridge passable to traffic crossing the swollen river on the course. Bravo. To the credit of the swamped (pun intended) grounds crew, they did finally construct a new crossing from scaffolding that only slightly resembled the bridge on the River Kwai. In all seriousness, the grounds crew at Highland Meadows Golf Club did an unbelievable job keeping as much of the course playable as they did. They truly deserve praise.

Rain wasn’t the only difficulty brought on by the weather. The heat and humidity caused umbrellas to be used more for protection against the sun than rain. People were draping wet towels under their hats like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. We were lucky the sand storm passed to the south, only wiping out Bowling Green.

Since UT has yet to send me on assignment to Fiji (maybe next year), I have to imagine it actually felt more like summer in the South Pacific. Strangely enough, after joining the streams of weary spectators trudging from hole to hole during the hottest parts of the day, two completely different people made reference to the Bataan Death March. It’s just a hunch but I bet that description will be left out of next year’s brochure.

I didn’t miss the irony that the tournament most likely trucked more water in than Mother Nature dumped on us during the storms. Neither did Aquafina.

The most ironic thing I saw was the beautiful blue Olympic-size pool that sat completely unused for the whole tournament. Strike that. It wasn’t ironic; it was cruel because you had to pass by it on the way from the golf course to the media room. More than once, I wondered exactly how water-resistant my cameras were and how wet my car seat would be the next day.

Detroit News staff photographer Dale G. Young splashes in the flood waters near the second hole during a weather delay in the second round of the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic at Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, Oh., Friday, July 14, 2006. (Photo by Daniel Miller)

Aside from the heat and the hard work, shooting the tournament was pretty fun because I was able to hang out with old colleagues and meet new ones like the legendary Dale Young from The Detroit News. It’s almost like a four-day workshop where you get to improve skills, bond with other photojournalists (read “complain about stuff”), and cause public embarrassment with photos of them playing in the floodwaters between storms. Sorry, Dale.

Deciding whether or not to do it all again next year is a no-brainer. I always listen to my doctor, and I always honk for bratwurst.

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