The Clutch Pro Tour is full of people who are chasing their dreams. People who have made sacrifices and taken risks to pursue a life in golf. A life on tour. For Andy Crook, it’s no different.

Only, he’s not been chasing tournament victories, a Challenge Tour card or lucrative sponsorship deals. His vantage point is a different one. At every Clutch event, Andy is there, telling stories with his photographs.

But his job isn’t just about taking pictures. His role is a vital one in giving unheralded, up and coming golfers the chance to showcase themselves on social media. He takes pride in his work and joy in seeing players progress through the ranks and on to bigger things. He’s the man the players tuck in their shirts and straighten their hats up for when they see him coming over the hill on his buggy. This is the story of life on tour, seen through a different lens.

The Journey into Photography

On 23^rd March 2019, Andy took a voluntary redundancy and an early retirement in order to dedicate his full attention to golf photography. He decided, with his wife’s blessing, to give it a try for one year and see how it panned out.

One year later to the day was one for the history books. For all the wrong reasons. The first covid lockdown was announced in the UK, and everything came to a standstill. While he had managed to just about break even in his first year, this was an unhappy anniversary. With everything shut down and sport being put on the back burner, it could’ve been a premature end to Andy’s ambitions. Thankfully, opportunities knocked.

“Literally everything came to a grinding halt. Just prior to that I became friends with Chris Hanson, and he’d just started up the 2020 ProTour. For a couple of months everything was just totally focused on the pandemic and nothing else. But then golf was one of the first sports to open back up. I did a couple of events with Chris, and I did one or two local ones. But then I was contacted by Tom Hayward, who was just setting up the Clutch Pro Tour. Tom said he really liked my stuff and asked if I wanted to come and do some work for him. Here we are, 5 years later.”

For Andy, however, it wasn’t always golf. He got his break in photography through his local football club, Swindon Town. He took his camera along to Wembley in 1989 when they faced Sunderland and took a photo that impressed his family and friends. He asked the club permission to make copies and sell it. Not only did they agree, they were so impressed that they offered him the opportunity to work for the club the following season.

After 5 enjoyable seasons at Swindon, his focus had to return to his career with the Royal Mail. Photography went back to being a hobby for the best part of 10 years. After a small stint in the early-2000s following a local superbike rider, Andy finally decided to give golf a try.

“I always followed David Howell, who was a local Wiltshire golfer. I went to the BMW pro-am in 2013 and took some pictures of him and that was kind of my big break. I sent the photos in to the Swindon Advertiser and they published them. Jordon Smith is from my hometown and he came on the scene at around the same time, so I went to a few events and took some pictures of him too.

The Advertiser were great in getting me accreditation so I could attend events more formally and build friendships with some of the players. I gave the players the photos afterwards, which wasn’t necessarily a great way to make money, but it started a little portfolio and gave me the chance to get some visibility and build up more of a following on social media.”

Andy wanted to make the move into golf photography. But it’s fair to say that, in the Clutch Pro Tour, he found something much bigger and more meaningful, and the sense of pride and love for what he does shines through.

The Clutch Pro Tour

“I’m really proud to see what Tom’s created and being part of that as well. I think what we do, and what I do, some of the principles in which we work I think are really unique.”

Mainly based in England, as well as start and end of season events in the Middle East, Clutch is an official Satellite Tour to the Challenge Tour, the second tier of European golf. There have been a host of names who have gone on to big things, and Andy has been there up close to witness their rise through the ranks.

“I love supporting the players and seeing how they’re furthering their careers. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to follow Jordan Smith, Laurie Canter and Eddie Pepperell who are the local boys. I love the opportunity to photograph them. Likewise, you’ve got people like Brandon Robinson Thompson, Marco Penge, Dan Bradbury, Dan Brown, George Bloor, Gary King…seeing those lads progress and advance is the thing that gives me more pleasure than anything else.”

Andy describes a family environment where there is a great level of camaraderie, even though everyone is ultimately fighting for position on the order of merit, and for their futures in golf. And in his role, he is absolutely a part of that atmosphere. He gets the opportunity to play practise rounds with the players, receiving a wealth of tips for his own game in the process.

For him, the best part of his job isn’t taking the photo of the day. It’s getting a smile and a thumbs up from a player after he’s just sunk a putt. It’s seeing the players quickly tidying themselves up knowing that the camera is about to be fixed on them. It’s about being part of something bigger.

That is reflected in his unique approach. At every event, Andy guarantees that every single player will be photographed, regardless of their status, reputation or performance on the day. In his eyes, everyone has paid the same entry fees, so everyone will get a good photo to help boost their profile on social media and attract sponsorships- effectively the lifeblood of golfers at this level.

“It doesn’t matter whether you finish 1^st or 152^nd, you’ve paid the same so everyone will get photographs from me. There’s not been a single event from the very start where a player hasn’t had photographs. On day 1, 100% of players will get one, on day 2 maybe 80% and then after the cut, everyone has photos again. The deal we have with clutch is that the players are entitled to use the photos for their personal profiles. It’s not just about trying to capture the money shot, it’s the lad who’s trying hard to raise his sponsorship money to keep his season going who’s got a couple of logos with his sponsors name, capturing that for those lads is more important for me than getting the glory shot.”

It’s Not Always Sunshine and Birdies…

Practise rounds with professional golfers, the best courses in the country, trips to the Middle East, camaraderie and a family environment; it sounds like the dream job. But bad days happen, too. And the work is far from easy.

“A bad day is not getting the best photos, it’s when it’s pouring with rain, it’s a miserable wet horrible day and everything’s soaking wet. The camera’s bounced off the buggy, which it does on numerous occasions, and you snap a lens. Those are the downsides, when you’re in the heat of the event and you’re thinking ‘crikey, I’ve got to get from the 9^th to the 16^th before they finish’ and you go across a bumpy bit of rough and all of a sudden your camera’s flying all over the place. Those aren’t the good days, those are the expensive days.”

It’s not just the weather that causes complications. There are apps that tell you exactly where in the sky the sun will be at a given time, so Andy knows where not to try to get photos from. If working at a new course, he uses a website called Pro Visualiser in order to map his way around. Another big challenge is ensuring that, by being in the perfect vantage point to photograph one player on one hole, he doesn’t find himself in someone else’s way.

If you think the job is just about taking photos, you couldn’t be more wrong. A huge amount of preparation is required, a huge amount of thought, particularly at this level where Andy is by himself with a field of 162 golfers and no coverage to refer to the scores. He depends on the players completing their live scoring on an app so that he can judge the best places to be, and which players will be the big stories of the day.

Photograph a football game and you just need to be by the side of the pitch. Photograph a golf tournament and there’s 162 players stretched across 7000 yards. Thankfully, Andy is a pro, well versed on the nuances of trying to cover such a logistically difficult event.  He says only one event springs to mind as an example of a real bad day at the office, although he’s reluctant to open old wounds.

“You never want to put a player off. Luckily they’re very good and they understand what you’re trying to do so I haven’t had too many of those days. But bad days do happen, and we had…a bad day. It was a catalogue of errors. But it’s all forgotten and done. We’re all friends again now.”

There is also the human element to think about. While he loves capturing players in their best moments, holing putts and climbing the leaderboard, it is much less comfortable to be taking pictures while players are in the depths of despair. He recognises that, sometimes, it’s best to put the camera away and head elsewhere.

Telling Stories with Photographs

There is one phrase that Andy often repeats when talking about his work. “Telling stories with photographs.”

So what stories do his photographs tell?

They don’t tell the stories of massive prize money, majors and global fame. They tell the story of young men and women chasing their dreams. Some will make the big time, some won’t. But for now, they’re all in it together. And it’s people like Andy who are there year-round that help create that atmosphere of camaraderie and togetherness. You can see it in the photos. Smiles, thumbs up, even in the heat of battle with futures on the line.

When the photos are of Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, it’s because there’s a local lad, or someone who has worked up through the ranks of Clutch, alongside them. It’s special for Andy, no doubt, to get up close to those massive names. It’s a sign of his success and the journey he has been on, a photographic chapter in his own story. But it’s not what inspires him most.

With that in mind, it is interesting to hear Andy talk about his future goals. While he attended one Masters as a spectator which gave him the initial itch to get into golf photography, he is comfortable with the fact he is highly unlikely to ever get accreditation for that event. The Open remains the one, realistic remaining ambition for him. So far, he hasn’t been successful in getting accreditation.

Yet, should he make it there one day, you can be sure that he won’t just be following the big names around, starstruck, like so many of us would. There’s plenty of others who’ll be doing that already. No, he’ll be following the local lads, the Clutch boys, the underdogs. He always has, he always will.

Below are more photos hand picked by Andy for this article. All of them mean something special to him, and tell part of his story through photographs.