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In the days before digital and drones, photographer Stephen Szurlej made it look easy
Words by Travis Hill
Photos and captions by Stephen Szurlej
Light / Dark
Stephen Szurlej is an expert on helicopters. He knows their specs, the size of their rotors and which doors to take off and hang from to get the shot. He’s spent a great deal of time in them, because before drones were invented that was the only way he got course aerials as the staff photographer for Golf Digest and Golf World.
“An R22 helicopter,” he explains, “is small, with a piston motor. It’s built for training and has no backseat. It isn’t really the safest or easiest helicopter to fly, but in deference to our budget, I used them. So I was about to do Pine Valley one morning in an R22, and we had just left the pad—maybe 3 feet off the ground. And suddenly the engine went and we just plopped right down. After that I said I’d only work in 44s.”
As you might expect, this is but one of many helicopter adventures for Szurlej, who worked for 30 years covering golf and tennis all over the world.
Like the time in 1999 when he had to make an emergency landing in a barley field outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, as he raced to get film of Jean van de Velde’s epic collapse at Carnoustie back to the States.
“We had a helicopter chartered to take us from Carnoustie to Edinburgh, where we’d get the last commercial flight to London,” he says. “Then we’d have a lab open to process the film on Sunday night, and I would get on the 8 a.m. flight from Heathrow to JFK, where a courier would meet me to take the film back to the office. That’s how we did it back then.”
I don’t want to blog, I don’t want to promote myself. So if good work comes, I take it.
Turns out the weather didn’t cooperate and the helicopter pilot had to make an emergency landing—on his own property.
“Bill Fields, our writer, is with me and the pilot is weaving all over because of the poor visibility,” he says. “Well, Bill’s sweating and my armpits are getting warm too. The pilot suddenly says, ‘We’re gonna land in my back garden.’ Sure enough, he put down in a little field; his wife put on a pot of tea and they called a cab.”
They missed the last London flight, but, using a bit of his New Jersey ingenuity, Szurlej plunked down his AmEx and chartered a private plane to London to catch the one to New York.
“The funniest part? Digital finally broke through as a practical thing the next year,” he says with a laugh. “And everything changed.”
Szurlej, who is nearing 70 but still runs frequently, rides his motorcycle and occasionally surfs, is now enjoying the perks of being semi-retired. Most of his golf work now is course photography.
“I don’t want to feed the social-media beast,” he says. “I don’t want to blog, I don’t want to promote myself. So if good work comes, I take it. If it doesn’t, I go do other things. I’m going to Africa soon because I want to get the big animals.”
You would expect nothing less from a man who did whatever it took to get the big stories.
I don’t remember the year, but this is a British Open crowd shot. They never allow ladders in U.S. tournaments, but things are obviously different in the U.K. I shot 25 consecutive years of all four majors—100 in a row—and it’s unlike any other crowd.
So I’m at Trump Doral, shooting one of the courses after Tommy Fazio [the son of Jim Fazio and nephew of Tom Fazio, both course architects] did the redesign. And Trump is hosting the Miss Universe pageant at the same time, so he invites some of the contestants down to hit a ceremonial ball. I wasn’t there to shoot that event, but I had some time to kill while I was waiting for the sun to go down for better light. I looked down and I saw the shoes she had on and said, “This is it. This is all I need.” I was joking with the course superintendent that he should have got the contestants to walk the greens with those things so he wouldn’t have to aerate them.
This has to be from the late ’80s. I was in Boca Raton [Florida] doing an instruction shoot; it might have been for Jim McLean. I’m on the way and this guy passes me at a light. I said, “Oh my gosh, I need my camera!” I pulled over and got it out of my trunk, but by then he was way ahead of me. So I drove a little too fast to catch him. I finally got ahead of him, pulled over and waited. I banged off six or seven frames as he drove by. It’s typical Boca Raton, it really is.
When I first joined Golf Digest [in 1980], everyone got to go to this golf school; it was one of the perks. For a week I got to work on my game—and I had a lot to work on, because I didn’t even play golf when I started with the magazine. It was an incredible faculty: Bob Toski, Davis Love Jr., Peter Kostis, Jack Lumpkin and Chuck Cook. Five of the greatest teachers ever. This shoot was later, and I thought it was a classic Toski pose. He was a comic, by the way. He probably gave me a middle finger before or after. He was always a
wise guy.
Here’s another helicopter shot, this one at Mauna Lani in Hawaii. That black lava always makes the shot very different, and I had some dramatic early morning light. I’ve always really liked this picture.
This is Tiger Woods’ famous shot in 2005, the hole-out at the 16th hole. The Masters is so difficult to shoot because they never let photographers inside the ropes. So I’m in the crowd, toward the 17th tee, and I was just a bit above the crowd. When the ball went in, everyone went crazy and their hands blocked me. Most of the shots I got were ruined, but I got a couple like this one. It’s a typical example of how hard you work at Augusta, and sometimes the payoff is huge. I think when Jack [Nicklaus] won in ’86, there were some loud roars, but this one might have been the loudest I’ve heard there.
This was when Mark O’Meara won [the Masters] in 1998. Back then you were still allowed to do remote cameras at Augusta. Later, one went off at the wrong time, and they banned them. But for this one I had a long lens and a foot switch for the remote. I was up in the photographers’ platform, which isn’t there anymore. But this image is from the remote. I preferred this one because of how the caddie lets the flag drop, with his arms out. This one said Augusta more than anything else I shot that day.
About 10, 15 years ago, I spent a couple weeks in New Zealand and shot all the great courses there. It was a wonderful trip. I passed this public course as I was driving back from the course I was shooting on my list. It was just a little muni, but I saw these guys and I loved it. So I just pulled over, got my camera out and shot them as they walked toward the green.
Helicopters are harder to come by in Ireland. I was shooting Old Head [Golf Links] and I convinced this farmer to fly me up there on his plane, a kind of crop-duster thing. It was tough because the wing is above the fuselage, but you have the struts of the wing to deal with in the shot. But we got it.
