Who, Me? A Sports Photographer?

So, the Knights of Columbus held a golf tournament, and I’m a Knight. Does that make me a sports photographer? I guess so, even though I have very little to do with sports. In fact, my father always told me, “Son, if you can’t be an athlete, at least be an athletic supporter!”

So, off I went at 7:00 Saturday morning to the Turquoise Hills Country Club to help get the tournament set up. That means I carried stuff in from the parish secretary’s car and put in on the table. Then I ate a donut.

Rick Valencia, our Grand Knight, invited me to place some flyers in all of the golf carts outside, so I did that. Then he invited me to ride the course with him to put up some signs denoting the various tee box sponsors (see, now I can use phrases like “tee box” as if I really knew what they meant. I figured a tee box was what golfers kept their tees in, but I was way wrong.).

After that, 84 golfers arrived all at once to sign in, pay their tournament fees, and buy tickets for a 50/50 drawing, some raffle prizes, and “mulligans.” (Again, I thought that was a stew, but I learned different.) Father Mike, our local pastor and Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus Council, told me that selling mulligans (which are do-overs, if you didn't know) is a cheap way to raise money – you’re selling absolutely nothing, and collecting a dollar for each one you sell! Most of the golfers bought $5 worth, because they knew that all the money raised is going to support the KofC scholarship program for local high school graduates, and a cancer center in Tucson.

Then it was time to start the tournament. I took my camera out and got lots of pictures of everybody milling around, or sitting in golf carts waiting. Then Grand Knight Rick and Chaplain Father Mike started the show.

All at once, all the golf carts started rolling and I got out of the way. I took a lot of pictures, and if you want to see all of them, you’ll have to visit our Web Album. Actually, you’ll only see 52 of the 95 pictures I took, because some of them weren’t very good. If you want to see a few of the pictures, read on.

I left early, because I was tired of walking all over the golf course, it was cold outside, and wind kept blowing my cowboy hat across the fairway (which is not the opposite of “unfair way."). Besides, it’s dangerous out on the fairway, with 84 wild golfers all swinging metal clubs at those little white balls with the dimples!

I later learned that all the golfers made it through the tournament and back to the clubhouse a half hour before an arriving storm dumped rain all over the Arizona territory. And we collected a little over $3000 for our charities.So, what did Suzy do all day? She reached a new breakthrough in her physical therapy exercise program, the one that was called for after her shoulder replacement surgery. She is awakening some muscles that went to sleep when her shoulder was not working right.

She spent quite a bit of time working on Escapees Chapter 21 work. This picture shows her modeling the Chapter 21 cap. The “poof” on the back is her own creative addition! As treasurer, Suzy is responsible for collecting registration fees for an upcoming rally, collecting dues, and sending out all the paperwork that goes with it. It all seems to be happening at once, and she is finding that a lot of the paperwork she received was out of date, and many procedures had previously been done with paper and pencil. She is moving them onto her computer to make the job easier and less prone to error. After I got back, we traveled the park delivering membership cards, receipts, and paperwork for the rally.

To top it all off, she pulled a bunch of stuff out of refrigerator storage and made a delicious chimichanga mélange for dinner. At the end of the day we watched a little of the Olympics before heading off to beddy-bye one more time in … Our Life on Wheels.

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