“Do you mind if I throw a camera in your face?”
With those 11 words, videographer Mike Wolfe changed the course of golfer Mike Visacki’s life. This is the story of Big Mike and Big Mike.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Wolfe, who works for PGA Tour Entertainment and cut his teeth at Golfweek many years ago, had captured the victory celebration of Aussies Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. He photographed Smith’s mullet in all its glory (see below) and didn’t leave TPC Louisiana until 10 p.m. He logged three hours of sleep before heading to the airport to catch a 5:30 am flight to Tampa and straight to Southern Hills Plantation Club to shoot his first PGA Tour Monday Qualifier. Life on the fringes of the circus that is the PGA Tour, as essentially one of the Carnys, can be anything but glamorous.
“I had no interest in being there at all,” Wolfe said.
But Wolfe projects a positive spirit in the workplace and once he got in the field, the juices began flowing. He helped two different players find their balls in the bushes near the sixth hole and as the storyline of a playoff emerged for the final spot in the field, Wolfe’s woes were forgotten.
Wolfe could be forgiven for having never heard of Mike Visacki, a 27-year-old mini tour pro, until he canned a 20-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole to earn his first start on the PGA Tour. Wolfe rushed in to film Visacki stick his face into his caddie’s left shoulder as hot tears rushed from his eyes as he realized a lifelong dream to play at the highest level. When he pulled away, Visacki blinked back tears. But it was too late. Here was this bearded mountain of a man– Big Mike to his friends – shedding tears of joy and they wouldn’t be the last ones.
Wolfe was behind the camera when a PGA Tour producer conducted a short interview. They had everything they needed to produce the type of feel-good story that would fill space between ad units early in the week before the tournament got underway. That’s when Wolfe asked those 11 fateful words that changed Visacki’s life.
Cameron Smith (left) and Marc Leishman, sporting a mullet wig he bought online, are photographed after their victory at the Zurich Classic in the TPC Louisiana locker room by Mike Wolfe.
Given a green light to stick a camera in his face, Wolfe zoomed in as Big Mike dialed his father, an immigrant from Yugoslavia who grew up in a home of mud and hay and sacrificed so his son could chase his dream, and instructed him to click speaker phone. The 12 seconds of raw emotion of Big Mike telling his father, “We did it,” would melt the heart of even the most ardent cynic. Even Wolfe admitted he got choked up.
“I’m not one to be emotional when I’m working, but if it had gone on another second my eyes would’ve been watering,” he said.
“I made it.”
Michael Visacki fights back tears as he tells his father that he’s reached a lifelong goal of competing on the PGA TOUR.
He successfully Monday-Qualified for the @ValsparChamp. pic.twitter.com/5ci5L1KoLp
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 26, 2021
He likely would have lost it had Visacki’s next call to hid mother gone through, but it went straight to voicemail. With the shoot over, Wolfe put down his video camera and said, “If it wasn’t for COVID, I’d give you a hug.” Both men smiled and went their separate ways.
As soon as Wolfe played back the tape on his camera, he realized what he had captured made the effort to be there worthwhile. Wolfe also had been behind the lens for the Tour’s previous biggest viral video of Amy Bockerstette, a Special Olympian with Down Syndrome, making a par at the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale as she repeatedly proclaimed, “I’ve got this.”
Visacki’s viral video resonated for the same reasons in that it wasn’t forced; it happened naturally, and it was a beautiful moment that tugged at the heart strings. It was the best possible outcome for covering a Monday Qualifier, something that traditionally had been an afterthought. Still, who could have predicted that ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt would choose the video to close his show that night, or The Today Show, Fox News and others would make Big Mike so big that strangers recognized him at a local restaurant and told him they were touched by his story and to keep plugging away.
“I never imagined it would take off the way it did,” Wolfe said.
More than 12 million people viewed the video of Big Mike. Suddenly, his story made him an overnight sensation that warranted his own press conference the following day. When he walked in the room, Big Mike’s eyes lit up when he saw Wolfe.
“I smiled at him and said, ‘Sorry for making you famous,’ ” he recalled.
Big Mike let out a fresh round of tears when he was asked about his father, and the press ate up the details of a dreamer who put 170,000 miles on the odometer of his 2010 Honda Accord and won 37 times on the West Florida Tour alone. All he seemingly needed was a break.
Later that day, Wolfe was shooting drone footage at a hole where Big Mike was practicing and he made sure to come over to the rope line and thanked Wolfe.
“I was just doing my job,” Wolfe said.
But the more he’s thought about it, the more he’s come to realize that he was part of something special and that every once in a while his job allows him to reach an enormous audience and potentially impact lives.
“Being able to change somebody’s life in a positive way just by doing my job, how many people get the opportunity to do that?” Wolfe said.
Valspar Monday Qualifier @VisackiGolfer has received a sponsor exemption into the @CSChallengeFW.
He learned the news from the man himself, Charles Schwab.
pic.twitter.com/nx0xVgrYY8
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 4, 2021
Big Mike is bigger than ever. While he missed the 36-hole cut in Tampa, none other than Charles Schwab himself phoned to offer Big Mike a sponsor’s invite to this week’s PGA Tour event, the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas. From toiling in obscurity to getting an extension on his 15 minutes of fame. Big Mike will never forget what Wolfe, an even bigger Mike, did to shed light on his pursuit of a dream.
Wolfe shot Big Mike’s post-round interview in Tampa and was packing his gear when Big Mike came around a fence to thank him. COVID be damned, this time Big Mike and Big Mike hugged it out. A chance encounter brought them together and neither of their lives would ever seem the same.