Maybe it was the alpha male love of the remote control, maybe it was too many years in their youth spent listening to Led Zeppelin, but Matt Tubb of Melbourne and Alex Brazendale of Hong Kong both shifted their careers to end up flying airships at events.
And the Open is their gig for this week, the first time their airship has been in operation here.
'I arrived last Wednesday at 6am with this 30kg beast in my luggage,' said Tubb, who in Australia requires a pilot's licence to operate the airship.
'I shifted gears out of electronics engineering to airships. Our company, Airship Solutions, is contracted at events like this, not only to give sponsors mileage, but there's a camera attached to this one to give live feed of the golf for the television broadcast.'
Wielding a walkie-talkie on his hip, and a whopping remote control that would be the envy of many, Tubb can move the gyro-stabilised cameras about to give 'beauty shots' - or useful aerial shots of a particular hole.
Tubb has 2,000 hours of flying airships at events from basketball, concerts, horse racing, motor racing, rugby and even inside shopping malls. Brazendale got bored in the office doing PR, and gravitated towards activities that liven up sporting events. 'Matt lets me have the remote control from time to time. Honest.'
