It’s an image all Kiwi golfers know only too well.
Every time you open the Golf NZ app to log a score or book a tee time, up pops a stunning scene. A pin flag flying in the breeze on a coastal green with a wave crashing behind and
On The Up: Ricky Robinson – The man with the best shots in golf
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Te Arai Links North course. Photo / Ricky Robinson
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He snapped the photo in 2023 when the North Course was about to open and he was assigned to tease the course for keenly awaiting golfers.
Robinson found the perfect spot with the flag on the 16th green flying and Sail Rock dwarfed by Hen Island (Taranga Island) in the background, showcasing what a visitor would glimpse from the par-four 16th tee at the top 100-ranked course.
“That shot looks nice because it’s open to the ocean. I zoomed in quite heavy, 300mm to compress and show the islands. And just got lucky with the wave. Off-the-cuff type shot that seemed to work,” he said.
Robinson is the resident photographer at Te Arai Links and helps showcase the stunning North and South courses, both regularly ranked among the best in the world, on a daily basis. A job he says will never get old.
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He has also taken his skills around the country. If you’ve seen drone shots from the run of cliff-edged holes at Cape Kidnappers or the majestic 14th at Kauri Cliffs to the rugged scenery of The Hills and the Kinloch Club, then they were most likely shot by Robinson.
He has a unique skill to capture these beautiful landscapes, where it takes a second to realise there’s a golf hole amongst the scene.
And it’s not just Kiwis who are admiring his images. His shots have graced The Golfers Journal, Golf Digest, New York Times and Sports Illustrated. Not bad for a self-taught photographer who six years ago would have called himself a greenkeeper.
The Aussie arrived in the country in 2019 as a greenskeeper at Tara Iti and began to take his camera with him every morning – something he started doing when he was working as assistant superintendent at Pinebrook Golf and Country Club in Calgary.
Te Arai Links managing director Jim Rohrstaff quickly noticed his talent with the lens and saw an opportunity to help showcase the impending development of the two courses being built – the North Course by Tom Doak and the South Course by Coore and Crenshaw.
“Te Arai was just sand and trees. I actually didn’t know Te Arai Links was being built when I moved here,” Robinson says.
“I just moved here for Tara Iti, then decided [to start] taking photos. Then Jim called me up and saw what I was doing photo-wise and said you should start doing this at Te Arai Links. I said ‘What’s that?’. Kind of spiralled from there.”
Robinson grew up on the Sunshine Coast and admits he played a little bit of golf as a kid but was more into photography and the outdoors.
“I was into lawnmowers for some reason. Anything with an engine.”
He started working as a greenkeeper in 2013, first at Royal Canberra, where he began his career in golf as an apprentice. Around the same time, he was a hobby photographer but the two paths of golf and photography didn’t merge until he moved to Canada.
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“I’d never shot anything on the golf course. Golf back then wasn’t super popular.”
“Because all the golf courses in Canada look amazing with all the backdrops, I was more taking photos of the landscape and then I started to realise, in the morning when there is no one out there the golf course is a blend of man-made but very natural – so I was just getting into that shooting mountain backdrops of golf courses."
He got the job at Tara Iti and asked if he could bring a camera out in the mornings.
“It probably got a bit too crazy, constantly taking photos,” he admits.
Within six months, he went from greenkeeper to golf photographer. He began capturing the building of Te Arai Links, which turned into a fulltime job – partly because of Covid.
He had almost too much to capture because Te Arai Links accommodation, restaurants and two golf courses were being built – and a documentary of the making of Te Arai Links.
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When Covid closed down the country, the documentary crew were locked out but luckily, Robinson was close by in Mangawhai.
“I was just 20 minutes away with the equipment and the director was like ‘I need you to shoot everything’.
“So I was happy with that, I got to shoot a lot of drone stuff and that was the point that other courses started to notice, then it became fulltime.”
“The big thing is having a home course like Tara Iti and Te Arai Links. Ric [Kayne] and Jim [Rohrstaff] are really good at letting you do what your strengths are. They’re like ‘how do we make this work?’ and marketing is everything. So it made sense. It was something I really wanted to do. They get a lot out of it through having an on-call photographer for anything and it’s my dream job.”
With the high-end courses in New Zealand with marketing budgets and with 400-plus other courses around the country, Robinson has timed his run. There are also new courses being built with the likes of The Hills undergoing a rebuild and Muriwai Downs, Hogans Gully, Douglas Links and Glendhu to be completed in coming years.
“There’s not a lot of golf photographers in New Zealand and it’s nice to have connections with all the other New Zealand courses. I don’t do a lot out of NZ, I want to in the future. I’m passionate about showing off New Zealand courses.”
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Robinson usually takes two cameras and his drone with him, which has become a key part of his equipment over the years. Drone technology has done wonders in improving coverage and photography of golf events.
His first drone purchase was in 2014, a quadcopter which he had to cable-tie a GoPro to in order to test images above a football field. Now with the latest drone technology, he can capture 18 holes before lunch.
“In a morning, I take around 100 photos and from that, there might be 10 to 20 actual good photos. I used to take hundreds but I’ve gotten a lot more picky.”
But he continues to find new spots at Te Arai Links.
“All the time. It’s often, you don’t expect, you turn back on a hole and think ‘I’ve never seen it from that angle’. I still see people take photos on their phone and I think ‘where is that?’. Seven years I’ve been here and I’m left thinking ‘where are they?’ I can’t figure it out.
“I was meant to come here for a year, I was planning, but this place is unreal. I’m never leaving. Until they say ‘we don’t need you anymore’, I’m staying here forever.”
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Ricky Robinson’s images can be viewed at rickyrobinson.co.nz
Correction: An earlier version stated that the islands seen from the 16th tee at Te Arai North were Little Barrier Island and Aotea Great Barrier Island.
