hcochr21, Author at Hallie

Mira Vista Country Club

by hcochr21 | Nov 8, 2022 | Photography

Mira Vista is a unique 18-hole championship Fort Worth country club golf course that impressively winds through the Mira Vista community. This layout surrounds the multi-level clubhouse and presents an array of beautiful holes that will challenge every level of golfer. The masterful course is the creation of golf professional Tom Weiskopf and golf course architect Jay Morrish.

I’m very fortunate to be an active member here and serve on both the Membership and Golf & Greens Committees. With my background working at the Texas Golf Association, I’ve had the great pleasure of visiting and playing some of the best courses in the state of Texas. I believe that Mira Vista, as a golf course, and a whole club, can stand next to any of them.

Greg Hatch, our General Manager, approached me several months ago about redoing all of the club’s photography for our new website that will be going live in the Spring of 2023. With the hiring of Joseph Danton, the new Superintendent, it seemed to be perfect timing to shoot the golf course. He has been a great fit with the MVCC staff and continues to increase the quality of the playing experience.

Using a drone is one crucial element in successful golf course photography. You can see in the before & after image above, that shooting from a higher angle shows off the undulations and design of the hole so much better than just shooting at eye-level. Time of year is also important. I had a window of two days to shoot all 18 holes. Mid-September was the right month for the grass to be really green and we knew that the few days prior to The Classic, would be when the course would be in the best shape. I’m very pleased with how the course images turned out and below are some of my favorites.

Hole 1

Pro’s Advice: Favor the right side of this bowl shaped fairway; second shot is downhill to a two-level green.

Hole 3

Pro’s Advice: The bunker left of this green could stop a ball headed for the lake.

Hole 4

Pro’s Advice: Hit it long or play it safe to the right, but not far or the trees will give you a challenge. The green is guarded by bunkers and the lake to the left.

Hole 6

Pro’s Advice: Intimidating rock cliffs run along the right side of fairway, but the real trouble is in the trees on the left.

Hole 8

Pro’s Advice: Avoid the lake on the right side of this hole. A large bunker guards right side of green.

Hole 11

Pro’s Advice: Second shot can be played either side of the meandering creek. The green has a “false front” and is the largest on the course.

Hole 12

Pro’s Advice: Reminiscent of the “Postage Stamp” in Scotland where Tom Weiskopf won the British Open. Eleven sand bunkers surround this green.

Hole 13

Pro’s Advice: The fairway slope helps to direct your tee shot toward aiming bunkers. Second shot is uphill to a 3-level green.

Hole 14

Pro’s Advice: Tricky green slopes away at back left. Avoid the grass bunker short of green.

Hole 18

Pro’s Advice: Things aren’t always what they appear. Jay asked that we not reveal the secret of this hole.

Let’s Create Something

Anera Sports

by hcochr21 | Aug 31, 2022 | Website

It’s no secret that in 2022, a user-friendly, responsive website is critical for businesses. Your website is often one of the first interactions customers will have with your business and a well-designed website will help with your search engine ranking. Be honest: Is it time for a website redesign?

Many businesses are hesitant to redesign their websites because they think they are too busy to dedicate time and resources to the project and that they don’t need a new site. However, if you’re not seeing enough traffic or engagement, it may be time to consider redesigning your site.

Here are two signs that it might be time to consider an update:

1. You’ve been using the same design for over five years. A lot can change in five years! If you’ve been using the same design since before 2015, then it may be time to update your brand’s look and feel.

2. You have outdated content or products on time site. If you’re still advertising products that are no longer available or mentioning events that happened long ago, then it may be time to update your content so that it can better represent what you currently offer today.

Getting Started

When you landed on Anera Sports old website, you can see quite quickly that it was built with a standard out of the box solution, like Wix or Weebly. This one was actually built using GoDaddy’s website builder.

The website was not mobile-friendly and it lacked cohesiveness with the brand standards we had built. The company’s staff has decades of experience in tournament administration/management and this is one of its most important differentiators, and that information was lost in the over-simplified design.

We laid out a site map for the new website that was easier to navigate. We wanted to bring the services and experience to the forefront, and we used simple, organized boxes to distinguish the different service buckets visually. On the About page, we also included photos of the staff and bios highlighting their many years of experience.

Anera Sports brings a wide range of experience, business acumen and relationships that are resources for our clients. Known for the exception administration of championships at the highest level along with leading the business operations to higher levels.

View the Website

“Hallie was wonderful to work with throughout the entire process of redesigning our website. She was knowledgeable, creative, and a great communicator, and we are so pleased with the new look and functionality of our site! We’d absolutely work with Hallie again, and cannot recommend her design services enough!”

Rob Addington
CEO
Anera Sports

Not Much Has Changed

by hcochr21 | Jul 6, 2022 | Video

This year we have created several TV spots that are in the current rotation on the Golf channel. Here is the spot we have in the rotation now about the Ben Hogan Golf Equipment company.

Revolver Brewery

by hcochr21 | Jun 20, 2022 | Website

Building websites is like putting a puzzle together. Creating and building something that everyone can be proud of is exciting. In this post, I want to share a little bit about the process of redesigning a website.

Background

Founded in 2012 in Granbury, Texas by father and son Ron and Rhett Keisler, along with seasoned master brewer and cicerone Grant Wood, Revolver Brewing is one of the fastest growing craft breweries in Texas.

Now owned by MillerCoors, Revolver first approached me in September 2020 to put a bid in to rebuild their website. They were in the middle of a complete company re-brand and wanted a new website to reflect all of their updates.

Getting Started

We officially started in November and all of a sudden, we were off to the races.

First, we shared ideas and collateral. I needed to understand what their visions and goals were. Here you can see some snippets from their Brand Guidelines. This is always helpful, so I stay within their guidelines when I start designing layouts and choosing imagery.

Building a New Website

The original site was functional and served its purpose; however, it lacked a lot of content, was not mobile-friendly, and visually felt outdated. After several meetings with their team, I presented these wireframes. Once approved, it was time to build.

To the right is an example of the wireframes created for the home page and a secondary landing page. For each page, I get approval on a wireframe. This communication is crucial during the process so that everyone always remains on the same page.

After approval, I added the actual images and text to each page, sent it to Revolver, and then made adjustments based on their feedback. It’s an easy way to work, and the flow of communication is very successful.

The New and Improved Site

View the Website

“Hallie was wonderful to work with throughout the entire process of redesigning our website. She was knowledgeable, creative, and a great communicator, and we are so pleased with the new look and functionality of our site! We’d absolutely work with Hallie again, and cannot recommend her design services enough!”

Krista Nussey
Digital Marketing Manager
Revolver Brewery

Southern Hills Country Club

by hcochr21 | May 19, 2022 | Golf, Photography

Let me start by saying, “I love Southern Hills.” In 2014, while I was working for the Texas Golf Association I had the opportunity to also do a lot of creative work for the Trans-Miss Golf Association. Southern Hills Country Club, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hosted the 2014 Trans-Mississippi Amateur Championship.

During our site visit, Dave Prinz and I had the incredible honor of playing a round there with Head Pro Dave Bryan and Superintendent Kris Davis. It was later in the afternoon and the four of us had the course to ourselves.

Southern Hills Country Club is best known for its Championship Golf Course, which is recognized among the top 100 courses in the world and has been the host to 16 Championships since 1945.

Southern Hills has hosted seven major championships for men, including the U.S. Open three times (1958, 1977, 2001) and four PGA Championships (1970, 1982, 1994, 2007). It is the only course to host the PGA Championship four times and is currently hosting its fifth PGA Championship this week. Southern Hills also hosted the first-ever U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur in 1987, and the USGA Women’s Amateur was played at Southern Hills in 1946.

During our site visit in 2014, one of my jobs was to create a promo video for the Championship, which you can watch here:

The field that year was particularly strong and included 2022 Master’s Champion Scottie Scheffler and 2020 U.S. Open Champion Bryson DeChambeau. Will Zalatoris, who has also had much success so far on the PGA Tour ended up winning that year. Read the full press release here. I love shooting golf tournaments and here are a few of my favorite images from that event.