As digital images are easily copied, Gary Moransuggests the least you will need to do to make them valuable is to get them signed and hold on to them for a while

IF TIGER Woods is number one, Phil Mickelson is number three, Ernie Els number four and Padraig Harrington is number five, what are we talking about? Conceivably, it could be their positions in the world rankings at some point this year. You could argue it's where they should stand on a list of the most likely winners of next month's US Open or even on a list of the game's most popular players.

But throw in the fact that Colin Montgomerie is number two and all those theories go way out the window. In fact it is the ranking of the most frequent appearances of those golfers in the Getty Images archive. And what an archive. If you go to www.gettyimages.com and search for golf-related images, you will find 344,933 to choose from with Woods featuring 13,237 times.

It's certainly a possible starting place if you wish to purchase a few prints to begin a collection or just to display some great images of your favourite golfers. Huge though that archive is, it is outdone by the Ron Watts collection, a small fraction of which can be viewed on www.historicgolfphotos.com.

Watts, a co-founder of the successful Edwin Watts golf shops in the United States, has spent a fortune in time and money collecting golf pictures and, copyright allowing, will sell them to the public through the website.

The site carries the lofty claim to be "working on a way to carry any golf photo that has ever been taken" but when the Irish Times put that to Historic Golf's lab technician Lou Pearson, he was a more than a little amused: "There was a very ambitious young man who worked here several years ago who must have put that on the website. I don't believe that Ronnie (Watts) is trying to achieve that at this stage of his life."

Watts can't even enforce the copyright on all of the photographs he legitimately owns and hence the famous picture of Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer smoking while waiting to tee off the second hole at Augusta is, as Pearson puts it, "stolen all over the place" although Historic Golf does have the original negative and can produce the best prints.

The total collection runs to something between half and three quarters of a million slides and negatives and, not surprisingly, hasn't yet all been catalogued.

Watts built it up by buying other collections as they became available and the "smoking shot" came from the purchase in 1998 of the collection of the Christian family, the official club photographers for Augusta National and the Masters for many decades. Historic Golf Photos will ship unframed prints to Ireland.

One of the most famous golf photographs ever taken is of Ben Hogan hitting a one-iron to the final hole of the 1950 US Open at Merion. It was taken for Life magazine by the late Hy Peskin who was later the first photographer hired by Sports Illustrated.

"He just took the best damn sports pictures ever," said another famous sports snapper, Neil Leifer. The photo is taken looking down the spectator-lined fairway from behind Hogan as he rifles the ball over 200 yards to the putting surface to set up his winning par. It captures perfectly the balanced follow through of perhaps the most envied swing of all time which coupled with the historical significance of the moment and the backdrop makes it a great sports photograph.

A signed 9 x 12 inch gelatin-silver print of the shot, signed by Peskin, is coming under the hammer at Bonhams and Butterfields in California later this month with a guide of $3,000 to $4,000.

The Merion shot doesn't appear in The Hogan Mystique which is a beautifully produced book featuring photos of Hogan taken by Jules Alexander, a New York photographer who specialised in snapping Hogan during the latter part of his career.

Closer to home and more up to date, Irish agencies Inpho (www.inpho.ie) and Sportsfile (www.sportsfile.com) have many golf photographs for sale from their websites.

With most photos today being digital and easily copied the very least you will need to do to make them valuable is to get them signed and hold on to them for a while. Failing that you'll have to go through that old box or scrapbook in the attic in the hope of stumbling on something old, unique and of more significance than the club fourball.

This column welcomes e-mails from readers concerning golf memorabilia and collectibles but cannot guarantee to provide valuations. If you have an interesting story or item,

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