We got so much positive feedback about Clay first PGC video, we decided to let him try his hand at instruction. In this video, Clay is on vacation in sunny Florida, and demonstrating bunker shots. Hope you like it!
Archive for July, 2011
Playing the 7th Hole with Clay
Clay Merchent makes his debut on our golf blog by introducing us to the 7th hole. In this video he describes the hole from the tee, and then tees it up. Next time we will ask him play a hole from tee to green.
Special thanks go to Dax McLochlin for being Clay’s camera man!
PURGATORY GOLF PRO PLAYS 108 HOLES
Jon Stutz Tees it Up for Charity
108 Holes, 42,187 yards, One Ball!Noblesville…Too hot to play 18 holes of golf? Not for Purgatory GC’s head professional Jon Stutz who played 108 holes and 42,187 yards Thursday at Noblesville’s Purgatory GC in a fund raising effort for the Indiana Golf Foundation and Autistic Awareness.Stutz started the day at 7 am and played straight through ending after 9 pm despite eight hours of his 14 hour round with temperatures in the 90’s. “You’d think I could have chosen a better day,” said Stutz.His father Jim Stutz drove the cart, offered support, putting advice and 20 bottles of water along the way.Playing the variety of tees at Purgatory, Stutz averaged under 73 strokes and played just one ball for the day. “Both of us were mighty wore out at the end of the day,” joked Stutz, having raised over a $1,000 for the two charities.
Sunset Over the First Tee
I normally share sunrise images on this blog. But last week I had the unusual pleasure of being at the golf course for sunset. I was attending a birthday party for a friend. Everything went smoothly, but it is a different kind of experience for me to be at work, and not working. The sky was too beautiful to resist, so I grabbed my camera and took a bunch of sunset pictures. I of course, always feel more comfortable with my camera in my hands, sort of a teddy bear thing. Our assistant pro, Blair Shadday commented that he always feels more comfortable with a golf club in his hand. It’s way better than smoking I guess.
This is an HDR image created using nine exposures ranging in value from +4 to -4. I did the tone mapping with Nik’s HDR Efex Pro, then cleaned it up in Photoshop. Hope you like it!
Changing the Cups on the Putting Green
Larry Wilk and James Brown demonstrate how we change the cups on the putting green while they explain why it is important. They also take a few minutes to explain our pin sheets. I don’t know if anyone else is learning anything from this blog, but I sure am!
Sunrise over the 16th Green
I took this photo last Saturday morning, obviously just after sunrise. I was standing on a mound facing east into the sun. You can see the clubhouse in the distance in the top right hand side of the image. If I could arrange my schedule, my husband’s, and my children’s I would be there every morning taking pictures, video tape, you name it.
There is a reason those first tee times are the most sought after, and it’s not just so you can get home and mow the lawn. The course is quite, you can hear the birds, there is mist on the lakes, and the light has a magical quality bestowed on it for only few moments after sunrise. It is simply invigorating, renewing, inspiring, and you can’t imagine being somewhere more peaceful.
Asian Salad
Chef Jon and Todd team up to share a favorite salad, pair it with a cold beverage, and discuss our most photographed hole.
Short game practice area
These are more HDR images. HDR is an acronym that stands for high dynamic range where you take the same photo at numerous exposures and then combine them with software so they more closely see what the human eye sees. Today’s cameras don’t have the ability to see the range of bright lights and shadows a human can see.
These were made with 9 exposures ranging from being under exposed by -4 stops to over exposed +4 stops. They were composited in Nik’s HDR pro, cleaned up in Photoshop, and then I applied Adobe’s Pixelbender filter. I love all the texture.
The photos were taken from Purgatory’s back deck facing the short game practice area. They are both the same image, just cropped differently. I like the tall image because of the star pattern made by the sun, but I also like the shorter image because you can see the texture so much more clearly. You have to click on each image in order to see the detail, hope you like them!
How to Create a Successful Golf Outing
Brian House of Tournament Promotions Midwest sits down with Blair Shadday to discuss the do’s and don’ts of a successful golf outing. Brian has a great deal of experience planning and executing golf outings. Some of our favorite tips were:
- Start planning early, a year in advance is normal
- Get your corporate sponsorship first
- Recruit good board members, because they are pivotal to your success. For instance, each member should be responsible for recruiting for people who will bring a foursome to the outing.
- Start everything on time, golf, lunch, dinner, entertainment, don’t give people a reason to leave.
- Keep games, mulligans and such to a minimum, they slow play, and reduce the likelihood that players will stay for dinner.
Check out Brian’s website at http://www.tp-in.com/ thank you Brian for spending some time with us and sharing your valuable experience and insights!
Now you can purchase PurgatoryGC artwork
You can now view and purchase Purgatory’s over-the-top artwork/photography we’ve been sharing here. You can reach it at www.TennaMerchent.Smugmug.com. It’s under Tenna’s name because she’s the company photographer, and this gives her a place to hang her other artwork also. At this site you can order prints, get them framed, color corrected (why not?) you can even make gifts such as magnets and puzzles, so go check it out and let us know what you think!
We’ll continue to post new images, so check back later too.