Day 19: Louisiana bound

Friday equals travel day and travel day means we got to sleep in today! Now by "sleep in" I mean we got up at 6 a.m. instead of 4:15, but I'll take it! We had packed up all of the equipment yesterday, so we just loaded our luggage and hit the road for Louisiana! We forgot to stop on our way into Alabama last week for a picture with the state sign, but we got out for both state signs today!

The trailer always leads the caravan. I don't like the way the truck rides with the trailer hitched, so I usually travel in the second car. When we were just about to Baton Rouge, we saw the trailer bounce a little, then we saw smoke and smelt burning rubber. Sure enough, about 30 seconds later, we see the tire roll away and into the left hand lane where an 18-wheeler has to swerve into our lane to miss the tire. It was a scary few moments not only because the trailor had a flat, but also because the 18-wheeler almost slammed into the truck I was in and the run away tire almost caused an accident. Thankfully, we were right in front of an exit and were able to pull off and the tire made it's way to the side of the road. The good news is that we were trains on how to change the trailer tires and Landon, one of my teammates, had done it before. We had to unload a few tents from the trailer to get to the spare tire, but even still we got the tire changed in about 20 minutes and still had time to eat lunch before we had to get back on the road. 

Our poor tire!

We made it to Louisiana around 2 p.m., went to the golf course, set up HQ, met our host families and went to dinner. I was a little nervous about staying with a host family, but Ann and Brian seem really nice! Bridget is staying in the same house which helps for keeping up conversation. We even got a bowl of snacks in each of our rooms! So cute! The best news is that I don't have to go into HQ until 10 a.m. tomorrow! Time to catch up on my sleep!

Day 18: And the winner is...

Final round of the tournament was today! After I did a few random morning assignments, I wrapped up the things I could while the first couple groups were playing. When the last groups began playing, I went out and took more action photography of the leaders. When all was said and done, the Boys Division champion went 14-under-par 202 for 54 holes and the Girls Division champion went 6-under-par 210. I took photos of the awards ceremony and got to speak with the players. Both winners were really nice and I'm hoping I'll see them again at another tournament!

After a crazy hour or so of uploading pictures, finishing the scoring and writing the article, we started packing up all of our comms equipment, while the ops pack up their things. After worrying about storms all week, it finally started raining about 90 minutes after the awards ceremony. Can't believe our first tournament is over! Louisiana tomorrow!

Day 17: Starting tent

My view off of No. 1 tee.

I was so excited about this morning because I was in the starting tent! So for each tee time, I reminded them about Pace of Play, gave them their score cards and announced each individual when it was their turn to tee off. I usually had about eight minutes to talk with the players for each tee time. Once I gave all of my announcements and reminders, I started telling jokes. Like father, like daughter! I got a lot of eye rolls, giggles and "Oh my gosh's," but it was just so fun to get a smile to crack on their faces.

Moe teeing off the dock.

I also did some equipment surveys of the players and it was so obvious that I was not a golfer! During the second round of each tournament we have to take an equipment survey of every player in the field. The info goes into a database used by sponsors and such. The surveys are on a Kindle and you have to ask the player what the make of his/her driver, driver grip, irons, sand wedge, glove, bag, shirt, shoes the whole thing! It's a little intense! The actual clubs are abbreviated on the Kindle, so the first few times I asked players about clubs that don't exist. Once I made myself a cheat sheet though, it was smooth sailing!

At every tournament there is a social activity for players and their families, usually some type of dinner. Today, however, the social activity was hitting from the dock by the clubhouse to No. 1 green. It was a closest to the hole competition and the winner was just 9 feet from the hole! During our meeting tonight, our tournament director recognized that Michael and I were flying though our assignments and finishing before the ops crew. Our TD made the comment that the comms make or break a team and, so far, we've set things up to be an efficient summer! Considering how proficient our TD is, it was quite the complement! We ended the day with a team photo... can't believe our first tournament is almost over!

Team 3

Day 16: Action photography

My notes to identify players for action photos.

Another early morning, but we were up and at 'em on time. I was assigned to action photography today. During the first round of every tournament, the comms/media person, which is me this week, is in charge of getting an action shot of every player in the field. The trick is that you also must be able to identify the player's first and last name in the photo. So, I parked my cart at the teeing ground of No. 2 and stayed there from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. to get a picture of every person in every group. To get there names, I used my super zoom lens to look at the players' bags for name tags, graduation dates or any kind of identifier. As you can tell from the picture to the right, I took a lot of notes and didn't miss one player! Mission accomplished!

After I renamed all of the action photos, I went and filmed a swing video on the driving range. A swing video is a video of the junior hitting with a driver and iron from two different angles. The video is uploaded to the college coaches part of the website and is used as a tool for the coaches. I was doing the different angles/shots with this one girl Sarah and we got to talking about random stuff. At one point she stopped and said, "you must have been named 'Most Likely to Brighten Your Day' in high school." It was one of the sweetest things; it made my day! I feel like all I've been doing is messing up my assignments. It's tough to do this job well when I'm still learning the basics about the sport, but Sarah's sweet comment reminded me of why I wanted this internship. I wanted to be able to interact with juniors and parents, get to know them and help them in any way that I can.

We also cleared the course today due to "code red" weather. A spot of bad weather popped up and we had to go out in the rain and shuttle in players and parents. It was a little frantic, but we got everyone in safely. After a one hour delay, we shuttled them all back out and finished the round. The frosting on the cake today was that I snagged a cart with headlights! So fancy!

Shot with a 100-400mm lens

My swanky cart with headlights!

Day 15: Picture fiasco

My favorite photo of the day! Rachel giving the last
announcements before the practice round.

Finally! The tournament began today with the practice round this morning and the Junior-Am round this afternoon. Surprisingly, when my alarm went off at 4:20 this morning, I was ready to go! I was just in charge of placing cart signs in the cart placards this morning and taking pictures during the practice round send-off.

All of the photos that Tori and I developed and stuffed!
76 total frames!

In the afternoon, I took photos of the Junior-Am send-off, player registration, the parents meeting and the players meeting. While I was taking photos of the Tournament registration, Tori went out and took pictures of all the Junior-Am teams while they were playing on the golf course. She came back in from taking pictures around 3:20 p.m. We had to get the photos edited, sent to a 1hr photo, picked up, and stuffed into the correct frames (which were signed by a specific player in the photo) by 6 p.m. I got the photos sent in by 4:06, Tori and I dropped off a player at her hotel, got the photos from the closest Walmart (which was 25 minutes away), stopped by Sam's to buy more fruit and made it back to HQ by 5:55ish. With three of us stuffing frames, we had the photographs out on the awards table a little after 6 p.m. It was past the deadline, but I've never power walked that quickly through Walmart and Sam's. I'm embarrassed because I was almost running through the stores, but I'm proud of all we accomplished in that short window of time.

We finally left the course at 8 p.m. That's a record: 15 hour work day. One of many, since 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. will be my normal hours during the week.

Day 14: Qualifier

Not only did I make all of the cart signs, but I also got
to use my own cart sign! I felt to official!

Today was the Qualifier round at TimberCreek where players competed for the last open positions in the tournament. My alarm went off at 4:50 a.m. this morning and we were rolling out of the hotel at 5:40 sharp. It was a busy morning running around the course getting ready for the Qualifier shotgun, but we pulled together (even with a rain shower)! I rode with Rachel, the tournament assistant, for the first hour or so. It was part of the shadow program so that I could see how she followed groups around the course and how she handled rulings. Afterwards, I followed my own groups and eventually became a rover where I just bounced around the course and helped anyone that needed it.

Ice cream while watching Cinderella:
perfecting ending to a long day!

After the round, I was supposed to film a swing video for two players. The first player showed up and did a few practice swings while I set up the tripod. I asked if he was ready and went to turn on the video camera... dead battery. I forgot to charge it overnight. I was so mad and embarrassed. I apologized profusely to the player and parent, but there was nothing I could do. I will say this though: I will never forget to charge the battery again! I did remember the still camera battery, so I was able to take awards ceremony pictures. Thank goodness!

We finished the Qualifier and clean-up in record time and headed back to Steelwood to write the follow-up stories. We finished up the Qualifier publications quickly and then moved on to the last few things for the practice and Junior-Am rounds tomorrow. We were done by 4 p.m. and the ops team was done at 5:30 p.m. Our TD set a 7 p.m. departure goal; crushed it!

We stopped by Publix after dinner so that Tori could buy aloe, so we picked up some ice cream too! After a 12 hour work day, it tasted so good!

Day 13: Prepping for the Qualifier

Brett found a "?" during lunch at Arby's.

This morning was another later morning for the comms; we didn't have to leave the hotel until 8 a.m. The ops team had to leave at 7 a.m. Michael, Alexis (a full-time comms) and I went to Sam's and Publix to pick all of the snacks for HQ for the week before we headed to the course. It was fun to be doing something "normal" (aka grocery shopping), but at the same time we were buying mass quantities so it wasn't really that normal. We did buy eight bags of Gala apples though, so I'm in heaven!

Once we got to HQ, I worked on a few things for the Junior-Amateur round on Monday, but everything for that will be finalized tomorrow so I couldn't get too far ahead. I fact-checked all of the sheets Michael had typed up for the Qualifier tomorrow. There was a late addition to the field tomorrow so we had to go back and re-pair all of the players and un-staple, replace a paper and re-staple all of their packets... It was so fun!