European Open

Posted: Sunday, May 31st, 2009 in All, Day's Out

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Watching professional golf (and most professional sports these days) can be a costly business, so when the opportunity of free tickets comes along, it is foolish not to take advantage. The beauty having free tickets is the lack of guilty feelings if apathy takes over and one doesn’t attend (or the inevitable crapola British weather). However, the weather was lovely and my Dad was driving, so I didn’t really have any excuses for staying indoors.

The tournament was being played at the London Club, Ash, Kent – near Brands Hatch (and boy do you know it – there is constant drone of car engines).

Unfortunately this blog entry is not as big as I had originally hoped, as cameras were not allowed on the course… unless you are press. Personally I can’t abide rules like this, so I nearly left in disgust. I am not sure if this is a European PGA rule, or the club’s own, so I shall just hate both of them until I find out. Thankfully I hadn’t leased a 400mm lens for the occasion, though I had toyed with the idea. Not being one to stick to the rules, I did manage a few covert shots, but I must point put that a Nikon D200 with Nikkor 18-200mm lens isn’t that small and I had a bright blue Superman T-Shirt on, so I expect I stood out like a sore thumb.

I could only do covert shots for so long and the camera stayed in my bag for most of the day but, by mid-afternoon, I couldn’t face it any longer, so to make my point I tried a 23 shot hand-held panorama of the 18th fairway, from the grand stand back to the tee – trust me, you can’t do that spy stylee. The image below doesn’t  really do it justice so you can view it larger here.

As with all big golf tournaments there are a lot of ‘extras’ on offer – merchandise tents, food outlets and even coaching lessons. Nike were on hand to provide this and offered ‘Video Analysis’ of you swing. Amusingly this consisted of the pros using their mobiles – a quality frame rate no doubt. I expect it didn’t really help with the swing breakdown at all. If you are going to do something, do it right. I am sure Nike could have afforded some Camcorders and tripods.

In conclusion, and after much consideration, it was a good day out. Clearly the camera-Nazis put a dampener on it for me, and my right knee looks like a lobster, but it was nice to see some decent golf live. I did nearly touch Colin Montgomerie and it was good to see him tee off so close. Similarly it was pleasing to see Sergio Garcia up close after cocking up a tee shot on a par 3. The no camera policy just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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