Notebook

Blimp Returns
Up, Up And Away

Thought something was missing from golf telecasts lately but couldn't put your finger on it? It was those cool overhead camera shots from a blimp. Golf took a baby step back toward normalcy last week at the Tour Championship in Houston, where the MetLife Snoopy II blimp provided the first airborne coverage of a tournament since Sept. 11. After the attacks, the FAA banned nearly all aircraft, including blimps, from flying within three nautical miles of or 3,000 feet above large public gatherings, such as sporting events.

Last week Snoopy II provided coverage of the final three rounds at Champions Golf Club for ESPN and ABC following an on-again, off-again, on-again sequence that ended with the FAA belatedly approving a waiver for the Houston flyover. "Since Sept. 19, the FAA got a little tighter with the waivers because of those warnings from the CIA and the FBI about new terrorist attacks being likely," says Jim Jennett, who directs ABC's golf telecasts. "They finally approved the blimp on Thursday morning, but that was too late to get it here for the first round. The blimp is hardly the FAA's biggest problem now."

Of the five blimps used by TV at sporting events, Snoopy I and Snoopy II are the most popular at golf tournaments because they're the smallest (130 feet long) and the quietest, and they carry a special, 250-pound camera system. "There are blimps, and there are blimps," says Jennett. "[The Snoopys have] this high-tech camera system—the only one of its kind—mat's head and shoulders above everything else. So [they're the blimps] people want at their tournaments."

Snoopy II, which is primarily based on the West Coast and piloted by Mitch Johnson and Tom Whiddon, needed three days to fly from Los Angeles to San Antonio, then another four hours on Thursday to get to Houston. The blimp's top speed is 36 knots (41 mph), and it can reach an altitude of 10,000 feet. Snoopy I covers the eastern half of the country. Lately the Snoopys have flown mostly for advertising purposes. "This is the last tournament we'll cover this year," says Johnson. "We've done football, but the NFL doesn't want aircraft flying over its stadiums, so we're not doing any games."

Football and baseball coverage requires the blimps merely to circle the stadium. Golf is trickier. The pilot must constantly reposition the blimp, making sure not to let its shadow fall on, say, Tiger Woods while he's hitting a shot. "The blimp has become a tool of golf coverage," says Jennett. "In baseball, for example, it's used only for wide shots of the stadium, a set-the-scene shot. In golf we use the blimp's camera to show the holes and follow the ball. It makes a telecast feel like a major event."

For the pilots, the hardest part of the job used to be enduring their shifts without a bathroom on board. Now they have to deal with heckling too. Remember Black Sunday, the cheesy 1977 movie about a terrorist plot to attack the Super Bowl with a blimp? "I hadn't heard about it in a long time," Johnson said after the third round of the Tour Championship, "but I heard about it twice today."

That was twice too many.

Hall of Fame
Caponi Finally Gets Her Due

Greg Norman and Payne Stewart undoubtedly will get most of the attention during the Nov. 11 World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla., but no player in the Hall's class of 2001 is more deserving of enshrinement than Donna Caponi. She won 24 LPGA tournaments, including two U.S. Opens and two other majors, over three decades.