I had to sit out the waves of this past week as work commitments took precedence. I did hear a lot about them from my kids, but no briny immersion for me unfortunately. So this week's surfing images come from a previous north coast session. And the rest are from my weekend spent shooting the New Zealand Amateur Golf Championship for BW Media and Golf NZ. The tournament was held at the picturesque Otago Golf Club throughout the week, concluding at the weekend.
I've always liked the idea of golf, but never had the time to truly explore it. Like surfing it requires a lengthy amount of time and has a super-long learning curve. This weekend was a bit of a crash course in how tournaments are run. I was fortunate to have a couple of surfers appear at the course and give me some advice and tips on how to best photograph it.
The Otago Golf Course is a beautiful thing with mature trees, natives and gardens with fairways and greens that are pockmarked by the soft lines of sand bunkers. I willed a lot of balls into those as they made for some great photographs.
Kelly Slater is a great golfer. He loves a round or two when travelling and I learnt a few weeks ago that our Olympian surfer, Billy Stairmand is also handy with a set of clubs. Apparently the mental game of golf and that of surfing are not too dissimilar. Some deep inward reflection to conjure up the external performance, or so I am told.
At the weekend, Aussie golfer Jasper Stubbs was able to win the mental game in the men's with Jessica Green rising out of the shrubs on the 16th to seal her own victory after 34 holes.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS If you haven't seen it yet then the new film about the life of Gerry Lopez is doing the rounds and it's quite something. We sent filmmaker Isaac Chadwick along to review it for NZ Surf Journal. You can read that story right here ...
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