Ken Griffey Jr.’s Masters assignment is much bigger than photography

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Ken Griffey Jr. steadied himself as he stood just above the 2nd green at Augusta National.

He’d arrived in this location — fifteen paces to the left of the flag — just seconds earlier, carrying a pair of enormous blunt instruments and the indomitable focus of a bomb technician. Beneath him, Justin Thomas tiptoed into a stark-white greenside bunker and disappeared below the lip.

Then, suddenly, a flurry of action broke out before him, and Griffey plunged forward — holding his breath, training his eye, and then, finally, pulling the trigger.

If you’d like to understand what compelled the owner of 630 home runs into sports photography, you needed only these 15 seconds on Masters Saturday. The action at the intersection of anticipation and focus? The game-within-the-game between man and subject? The opportunity to make art from violence? As it turns out, Ken Griffey Jr. is still good at those things. The venue might have changed, but he never stopped hitting meatballs.

The journey from 13 All-Star Games to the photo room at the Masters was surprisingly simple on Saturday morning. Griffey rose early in a hotel room, drove to tournament grounds, collected an assignment from his editor, Bob Martin, and set out onto the golf course for the day. He carried a Sony Alpha 1 camera body with two large lenses, a 400mm and 600mm. He did not eat.

He tries to keep a low profile on the golf course, though that is occasionally difficult on account of his fame. Thanks to the thick ropes of muscle extending from his shoulders to his wrists, Griff’s version of 6-foot-3 is striking, but he speaks with a soft understatement and a sharp wit.

On Saturday, he wore a sleeveless black jacket over a black polo, with black pants and a white hat. He traveled with a Masters content staffer, who was armed with a backpack filled with batteries, memory cards and a monopod. When he wasn’t being interrupted by a patron, Griffey was quiet and serious — and carried himself at least a little bit sheepishly.

“Realistically, I’m the low man on the totem pole,” he said Saturday morning. “I’m still picking it up. If you’re not willing to learn then your pictures aren’t going to get any better.”

Griffey, now 55, was well into his career in front of the camera when he stepped behind it for the first time. He started shooting photos shortly after his 35th birthday, and largely due to the onslaught of well-wishers who began to distract him from his children’s sporting events. His children Trey and Tevin — both boys — were never issues, but his daughter Taryn was different.

“Boys look for Mom,” he said. “But girls look for Dad. They want to make sure Dad is paying attention.”

Griffey knew the feeling. His father, Ken Sr., spent most of his son’s childhood playing Major League Baseball. Ken Jr. estimates his father only saw him play 10 times during his formative years, and the loneliness from that distance ate at him for much longer.

He wanted to be there for his kids, but now The Kid was a famous ballplayer himself, and watching the cycle repeat.

“It was my fault,” he said. “I understood how getting that father’s approval was important, because I wanted it. I wanted my dad to see me, and sometimes it happened, but most of the time as a kid it didn’t.”

He tried out the camera for his children, but he learned to love the rhythm of capturing pictures. He enjoyed shooting cars, and learned action photography from attending races. When a friend in Orlando with a connection to the Masters learned that Griffey had also picked up golf, he reached out to Augusta National, who quickly extended The Kid a job offer. It was the most enticing job opportunity of Griffey’s post-playing life, but he paused before accepting it.

“When you hear you’re going to shoot at the Masters, you want to say yes real quick,” he said. “But then you’re like, ohhh, I’m gonna need to work on some things.”

He arrived nervously. Griffey had stipulated that he did not want to be treated differently from the other photographers in the photo pen, and Augusta National agreed. The problem was that the photo pen was a murderer’s row of the greatest sports photographers alive. Griffey was a glorified amateur — and he felt it.

“It doesn’t matter your status in life, if it’s something you don’t do professionally and everybody here is a professional, you’re still nervous to walk in the room,” Griffey said. “How would these guys feel if we all got into a batting cage, and I was sitting there critiquing them? It’s the same thing.”

The first few days were a challenge. At Griffey’s urging, Martin treated him as an equal. He was assigned a stall in the press center, and given the same photo restrictions assigned to every other tournament shooter. Martin administered real assignments each day, and was unafraid to deliver unflinching criticism — or outright rejection — to Griffey’s photos.

“The one thing I learned about is backgrounds,” Griffey said. “Your backgrounds are crucial. If you have a great background and your subject is in there, you’re gonna have a great picture. If you have a great photo in the foreground but your background is blown out, you don’t have a great picture.”

It didn’t help that Griffey’s efforts to blend in were futile. He was an abnormal photographer by any objective measure, taller and burlier and considerably more famous than any of his pals in the photo pen. He was flocked by fans everywhere he went, be they sportswriters in the press building or patrons at Amen Corner. He handled each interaction gracefully, but there was an obvious tension between receiving back-pats from 30,000 fans and the kind of quiet focus needed to deliver world-class photos.

As the week wore on, though, Griffey Jr.’s confidence grew. He grabbed a brilliant shot of Bernhard Langer’s embrace with his wife from off the side of the 18th green on Friday — he was in “perfect position” — that was quickly uploaded to the Masters’ website. From the side of the 2nd hole on Saturday morning, his goal was no longer to get a good shot, but a great one.

“I’m gonna be on top of the bunker, straight over it,” he said. “Bob wants green and he wants white, from the sand coming out of the bunker.”

He paused.

“So that’s what we’re gonna get.”

As we spoke on Saturday morning, I was struck by Griffey’s humility. He would not be the best photographer at Augusta National. In fact, he might be the worst, but there was no shame in that. He was here to learn, to get better, to try.

It helped Griffey’s ego that he’d made more money than God and attended All-Star Games in half the years I’d walked the planet, but in many ways, his fame was why the effort was so inspiring. It’s hard and mostly terrifying to be vulnerable when you’re gifted the grace of anonymity — it’s much harder and scarier when you’re not.

When I wondered how Griffey managed the fear of failure, he seemed confused.

“I mean, I’ve been this way since I was a little kid,” he said. “I learned how to fly a plane. I got my pilot’s license at age 36. I learned to scuba at age 30. You owe it to yourself to go out and find something you love, and you have to be willing to start somewhere.”

Suddenly, it occurred to me that Griffey’s Masters commitment might have been about much more than photography. The reason he’d thrust himself headlong into the masses at Augusta National wasn’t about taking cool photos, and it certainly wasn’t about spending a week as a celebrity. It was about scratching a much deeper itch.

“I try not to let my kids beat me in anything,” he said with a grin. “So yeah, I’m still competitive — I get in a little trouble with that in the house.”

Get in trouble … for what?

“Golf, tennis, pickleball — whatever,” he said. “It’s not about athletic greatness. The competitiveness is the fun part.”

I laughed at the earnestness of Griffey’s comment then, and I laughed again three hours later, when I found him charging into Amen Corner after Hideki Matsuyama.

As Matsuyama walked for the tee box on the par-3 12th, I watched as Griffey leapt into action — slipping around the trees down the right ropeline, past scores of ogling fans, and into the photographer’s pen. He looked calm, comfortable, and … was that a hint of determination?

He dropped to a knee as he framed his shot, his white Nike hat bobbing slightly above the crowd, until everything went quiet and still.

And then, on the most famous hole in golf, Ken Griffey Jr. squeezed the trigger and tried again.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com