When Joe Hubbard, CGCS, the golf course maintenance director at Broken Sound Club in Boca Raton, Fla., e-mailed me on Feb. 4 -- the day I left for the New Orleans conference and show -- I figured he was going to tell me about how the prep work was progressing for the Allianz Championship, the Champions Tour event the club was to host over Valentine's Day weekend.
Instead, his cyperspace missive was another portfolio of photos he'd taken the day before of the wildlife that call the club's tournament venue, the Old Course, home. The banded Florida water snake shown here was soaking up some sun near the 13th hole, while the the stunning shot of the bald eagle on a tree limb at the first hole marked the seasonal appearance of the majestic bird, a club regular, and a new mate he brought with him this year.
Hubbard, a 24-year member of GCSAA and a GCM staff favorite because he's never too busy to stop by our trade show kiosk and say hi each year, fancies himself as quite a wildlife photographer -- and he is. Joe likes getting up close and personal with his subjects (thanks, in part I think, to a long lens) and he's sent me several examples of his work in the past couple of years. Some of you may remember his shots of Broken Sound's resident three-legged alligator, Thumper, who was featured a while back in GCM's Front Nine section.
Meanwhile, the Allianz Championship once again came off without a hitch, thanks to Hubbard and his staff, including the Old Course supertintendent, five-year GCSAA member Phil Peterson. And, I imagine, all of Broken Sound's critters, large and small, survived the hubub of a tour event.
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