Most of us carry cameras on the golf course these days, but that alone doesn’t make us photographers.
I certainly don’t qualify as such, and I have a large collection of photographs to prove it. I take pictures on my cell phone almost everywhere I play. Almost without exception, those pictures fail to capture what I’m trying to convey, whether it’s the excitement of a particular moment or the enduring beauty of the terrain. A poor shooter, I have the rare ability to make one stunning coastal course they look no more special than a messy backyard muni.
And yet I know good photography when I see it, and I see it in the work of Jon Cavalier.
Cavalier is a sharp-eyed photographer and obsessed with architecture @linksgemsan Instagram account with more than 120,000 followers and an extensive archive of some of the world’s most spectacular courses. It’s an ever-expanding digital repository that Cavalier has been building for the past 15 years. He joined me to discuss it on a recent episode of The Destination golf podcast.
Photography is Cavalier’s passion, but it is not his profession. He earns his living as a lawyer. He is also a latecomer to golf. As a child growing up in Pennsylvania, he focused on baseball, which he played at the University of St. His first encounter with golf came years later through a corporate outing. A few shots in, the Cavalier was hooked. The challenge was tempting. So was the landscape, an aesthetic interest that grew a few rounds later when Cavalier found himself in Sleepy Hollow, CB Macdonald/Seth Raynor Classic in New York. He started taking pictures and never looked back.
In those early days, Cavalier knew little about private club culture. He had to learn protocols about requesting access, staying on course, and other details of etiquette. But his naivety turned out to be an asset. One of his methods was to call prestigious clubs, express his genuine interest in their architecture, and politely ask for admission, which, as often as not, he got.
Along the way, he refined his style. In addition to its vivid colors and compelling composition, Cavalier’s work is defined by a particular limitation: his course images almost never include people. He thinks of himself as a landscape photographer and not so much an artist as a documenter of other people’s art.
Away from the freeways, two of his other great loves are Gracie and Maddie, his Labrador retrievers, who both make frequent cameos in his feed and have earned a devoted cult following among his loyal audience. This love of dogs also drives another project: an annual LinksGems calendar, the proceeds of which go to animal charities. To date, Cavalier has raised more than $500,000.
He launched @linksgems at an opportune moment, as was Instagram gaining steam and emerging as a major force in the way golfers discover and discuss the game. Now, with a strong following and the game in a period of unprecedented growth, Cavalier works to document as much as it can, from Golden Age classics to the wave of modern designs sweeping the world.
He’s on the move a lot. How he balances that trip with his day job made good fodder for conversation, as did a number of other topics, including his methodology, his thoughts on what separates a memorable golf shot from a forgettable one, and his take on the rise of drone photography and what it’s done — for better and worse — to the way we view courses. He also offered some advice for the mobile hobbyists among us. Which means, he gave me some advice.
If you’ve ever stopped mid-ride to fiddle with your phone and wondered why the resulting image looks nothing like what you’re seeing with your eyes, this EPISODE it’s for you.
