Halloween 2008: The Return of the Nerdy Vampire!!!
Be afraid, be VERY afraid!!!
Even San Diego Wedding Photographers Deserve a Vacation Sometimes
For those of you who have stalked my blog for a while now, you might remember my post from last summer about my trip with my dad to “Mecca”, otherwise known as St. Andrew’s Scotland. Last week we experienced the round two of our golfing journey as we played Spyglass Hill, Pebble Beach Golf Links, and the Links at Spanish Bay. That puts us as having played seven of the top 100 golf courses in the world according to golf.com. Woohoo! We stayed at the Lodge at Pebble Beach, where I’ve shot two weddings in the past. I must say it’s WAAAAY more fun being there as a guest than as a wedding photographer. Still, I’d shoot there again in a heartbeat. Even as a guest I found myself walking around the property looking for good portrait locations. I need to get a life.
I guess it goes without saying that the golf was spectacular (the courses, that is, not the golf being played). Many people told me that Spyglass should be my favorite, but I have to say that, for me, it didn’t come close to Pebble. There’s just something about Pebble that you can’t understand until you play it. Like St. Andrews, it’s just special. I’d played Spanish Bay before and while it’s certainly a very good golf course, it just isn’t on the same level as the other two. More than anything, I enjoyed the time with my dad. That’s really what these trips are all about. I hope someday I can do the same with my boys. Thanks again, dad.
I hope you enjoy some of the photos from our trip…
There were deer everywhere you looked. This was the driving range at Spyglass Hill…
Me and dad on the first tee at Spyglass Hill…
The approach to the first green at Spyglass Hill. It’s a long downhill par 5 dogleg left out to the ocean. My second shot ALMOST cleared the bunker and made the green. Almost. I made par, which was a very nice way to start the trip.
The third hole at Spyglass is a short par three that heads directly to the Pacific…
This is the approach to the par four fourth at Spyglass. I’m sorry, but this green is just kind of silly. I’ve never seen anything quite like it…
Here’s a closeup of the “green”…
A sweet little par three at Spyglass. After the first five holes, Spyglass turns inland through the Del Monte forest…
The Lodge at Pebble Beach has a cool program for guests where you can borrow a Lexus SC 300 convertible for two hours for free. We took ours and drove around 17 Mile Drive. At the beach next to Spanish Bay we found a beach with some very “Blair Witch Project” rock formations. None of these were there the day before and they were all gone the next day!
No “human” could stack rocks like this…
The light kind of sucked, but I still had to give the Lone Cypress shot a shot. I tried to spice it up a bit with the foreground framing…
Here we are on the first tee at Pebble Beach. Yes, I was nervous, but it was NOTHING like the first tee at St. Andrews where my legs were a gelatinous mass of nerves…
Here we are on the tee box of what may be the most famous par three in the world (okay, after number 12 at Augusta)…the seventh. Jack Nicklaus once said he’d hit everything from lob wedge to a one iron on this 100 yard hole. I hit sand wedge to about 8 feet. Sadly, it then spun back toward the front of the green to about 35 feet where I promptly three jacked. DOH!
The seventh hole from the tee box….
This is the approach shot view on the 8th hole at Pebble Beach. Nicklaus called this his favorites approach shot in golf. I can see why. What you can’t see in this photo is that you’re hitting completely over the Pacific Ocean.
This is the approach shot to the par four ninth. It’s a LONG 450+ yard hole. I bombed my drive to about 150 out. I then striped my second shot…right into the face of that huge bunker. Next, I hit a gorgeous little bunker shot that almost holed out and stopped about 7 feet past the hole. I sank the putt for a par. Hands down, those were the four best shots I hit the whole trip (yes, even the second shot in the bunker… it was two feet from perfection)…
Here’s dad teeing off on the famous 17th hole at Pebble Beach. This is the one where Watson holed out greenside for birdie against Nicklaus in 1982 and went on to win the US Open by two. I made a MESS of this hole…
These two are sort of self explanitory.
Here I am teeing off on the most famous finishing hole in the world (sorry for the camera shake…dad!)…
Dad on the same…
Our last morning at Pebble Beach we got up early to play Spanish Bay. It was a glorious day and I couldn’t pass up the chance to get some postcard shots of the 18th hole. Nothing Ansel-worthy here, but not awful either…
Oooh… moody!
One more for good measure…
Our final round, for now, at Spanish Bay Golf Links…
Did I mention it was a beautiful day! This was one of my two birdies at Spanish. Yeah, baby!
Here I am teeing off on 17 at Spanish Bay. You can’t quite believe how close you actually get to the water here…
Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoyed my journey to Mecca Part II as much as I did (though I doubt that’s possible). Until Part III…
