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Look up, way up, in the skies above Torrey Pines — or just about any PGA Tour event — and you'll spot it patrolling at 1,200 feet like some sort of Behemoth Brother, a 130-foot-long, 4,400-pound, helium-filled sky whale out for a leisurely swim. It is the MetLife blimp, to golf what Cracker Jack is to baseball, a ubiquitous — if gigantic — strand of the game's DNA, right down to the white noise its whirring engines produce.
It all started in 1987, when John Creedon, then CEO of MetLife, wanted to broaden the reach of his company's Peanuts-based advertising campaign. "We had billboards, subways, signs — any place that we could think of," Creedon recalls. "The natural move was to the sky." And to the blimp, a huge, slow-moving ad space that captive audiences at sporting events couldn't miss. "The response was wonderful," Creedon says, although even he admits, "I never saw it becoming what it's become."
What it's become, beyond an effective promotional vehicle, is a staple of the Tour's TV coverage, beaming stunning aerial images of some 30 tournaments a year to golf fans all over the world. Pebble Beach never looked so good. John Daly never looked so small. And the game has never looked quite the same.
How it flies
68,000 cubic feet of helium. You'd fly with that in you too.
The eye in the sky
A blimp's steadiness and unhurried pace make it an ideal place to mount a camera. A technician controls the 80x-magnification camera with joysticks, and a transmitter sends the camera's signal to a receiver on the ground.
Cue the blimp!
"We can't hover in one spot," says pilot Jeff Capek, "so we have to try to time our 'passovers' to get the shot." Which can be a boon for viewers. "At least a few times per round, we get shots they can't get on the ground," Capek says.
Snooping around
Since 1994, Snoopy 1, which covers California, Nevada and Arizona, and Snoopy 2, which handles Florida, Texas and Georgia, have covered 120,000 miles a year. Each blimp has a 14-member crew (two pilots and 12 men on the ground).
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