I’ve been into golf for a long time, and attending a professional event is always a great opportunity.  I’ve been to a few events, the 95 Ryder Cup, the 2003 PGA Championship, the 2008 US Open, and this year my son gave me tickets to the 2009 PGA Championship.  There are always a lot of great players at the majors, and watching them is a treat.

The practice round days are more enjoyable than one might think for a couple of reasons.  First there aren’t as many people so it’s easy to scout out the course and decide the vantage points for the tournament days.  Second, cameras are allowed during practice days, so this time I decided to take advantage and try a little golf action photography with my 5d mark 2 and the 70-300 DO lens.  The very first images I ever sold were “sports” photography ... I took pictures of the local football players in action and sold black and white prints I made using a slide projector for an enlarger to parents for $3 per 5x7.  But that’s about the only sports photography I’ve ever done, and that was a few decades back.  The 5d Mark 2 really isn’t the right camera for this type of thing, but with this particular lens it’s light, has a great zoom range, and enough megapixels to crop considerably.

Despite the harsh lighting a little work in Lightroom brought the deep shadows back to acceptable range.  Nothing to get too excited about, but for me it was a blast watching these guys ... I even made a couple of changes to how I hit  short wedge shots after watching them,  which seems to be paying off.

Some pretty big printing jobs for the entrance ...

Defending champion Padraig Harrington looks on as his group hits off the first tee.

Tiger finishes his practice rounds so early all I had a chance to do was watch him on the driving range.  Here he chats with recent winner of the British Open Stewart Cink.

I watched Sergio for about 10 minutes as he worked on getting a feel for chip shots out of the rough. Stuart Appleby seemed to have a problem with his wedge as he worked on it for several minutes.  I have no clue what he was doing ... maybe sharpening the grooves? 

The 10th hole was one of the most picturesque ... and treacherous on the course.

Finally a few shots of Lefty.  I’ve followed Phil Mickelson’s career since he was a junior golfer, and often see him practicing at his home club in California.  His recent personal challenges (his wife and his mother both are battling breast cancer) has his game a little rough, but he’s got a great attitude and always fun to follow.

Pretty good freeze action here.  I had the ISO at 400 so I could get some faster shutter speeds ... this one was at 1/1000th.  OK,  I know I don’t keep my head down that well ... the ball is well on it’s way and he’s still looking at the divot.