Remembering Mark Brettingen

Long-time photographer for the Minnesota Golf Association, Mark Brettingen, 67, of Bloomington, passed away unexpectedly April 3.

Minnesota

Brettingen covered the local amateur and professional golf scene on behalf of the association website and magazine, Minnesota Golfer, for more than three decades. 

Along with his younger brother, Patrick, the two got the photography bug in the 1970s when their parents bought a home in South Bloomington and converted a basement storage space into a dark room and photo lab complete with processing tanks, water, stop bath, fixer and photo enlarger. 

“Mark was a self-taught photographer, and I took an interest in photography because he was my big brother,” recalled Patrick.

The Brettingens would cover PGA tournaments for the Minnesota Section and its annual magazine in the late 1980s, with Mark shooting the action and Patrick writing it.  

“We had a great time working together during those summers until the section stopped publishing the magazine. After that, Mark started shooting for the MGA.”

Brettingen was mainly focused with shooting the MGA’s major men’s, women’s and junior amateur championships and local USGA qualifiers, but he would also make time to cover many allied golf association tournaments including the annual high school state championships, the Men’s, Women’s, and Senior State Opens and the Public Links championships. 

In addition, he was credentialed to cover a slew of major national and international golf events including the 1991 U.S. Open, the 1999 Samsung Women’s World Championship, the 2002 Solheim Cup, the 2002 and 2009 PGA Championships, the 2006 U.S. Amateur, the 2008 U.S. Women’s Open, the 2016 Ryder Cup, the 2017 U.S. Senior Amateur, and the 2019 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

Likewise, when the professional tours visited Minnesota, Brettingen also covered them for the MGA, including nearly every regular and senior PGA Tour event hosted by Bunker Hills and the TPC Twin Cities golf clubs, the Nationwide (now the Korn Ferry) Tour’s Scholarship America Showdown hosted by Troy Burne and Somerby golf clubs, and, less frequently, the LPGA Tour. 

However, one of his fondest memories was traveling to Pittsburgh to cover the 1994 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club, where the King, Arnold Palmer, who grew up in nearby Latrobe, was making his last open appearance. Although Ernie Els defeated Loren Roberts and Colin Montgomerie in sudden-death after an 18-hole playoff, Brettingen’s highlight was getting the shot of Palmer walking up the 18th fairway, the last hole of the King’s final round at the national championship, doffing his cap and waving to the fans. 

Brettingen loved the work and it showed. 

Anyone familiar with Brettingen’s work will recognize his signature shot, the greenside bunker blast. Once he was aware of the player’s ball coming to rest in a sand bunker, he considered it a professional challenge to get into position and compose the shot before the player blasted from the bunker. What usually followed was a fountain of sand and golf ball exploding out of the bunker, with the subject’s face dramatically lit from below and the balance of the image framed by an emerald green and punctuated with a yellow flagstick. 

Brettingen produced his signature image in nearly every photo assignment he shot for the MGA, so it was among his favorites to capture, but when he wasn’t covering golf, he also covered professional football.  

Thanks to a Vikings contact through his bowling league, Brettingen was hired by the team in the mid-1980s and would later work for the National Football League through the 2006 season.

He loved the football work and was disappointed when, after an NFL Properties merger, the highly treasured assignments dried up, says Patrick.
 
He retired from the United States Postal Service after a 32-year career, where he met his wife Linda in an after-work bowling league. They married in 2012.

In fact, Brettingen was an accomplished bowler having compiled 300-point games on eight or nine occasions, scoring an 800 for a three-game series, an exceptional Honor Score, and winning a USBC state doubles title in 1978 with partner Leif Carlson, a fellow Bloomington/Kennedy High School grad and MGA Senior Men’s Player of the Year (2012). 

He was a member of the Hiawatha Golf Club, where he was a competitive single-digit handicap golfer, and he participated in the MGA Senior Tour for many years. In addition to bowling, his other passions included baseball, biking and reading about history. He is survived by his wife, mother Delores, brothers Thomas (Ann), Patrick (Sue), nephews Kris (Paige), Benjamin, Nick, and Tim, great-niece Elise, great-nephews Brice and Miles, honorary stepsons Michael and William, and honorary grandson Ezra (best buddy).