Cloquet grad reaches new heights

Pete Tomhave was on a lunch break at the Cloquet Country Club in the maintenance building, looking at an aerial view of Cloquet Country Club. He asked his boss, superintendent Jud Crist, if the picture was taken from a plane or a drone. It was a plane, Crist said.

That's when Tomhave mentioned that he had a drone and might be able to take some new pictures of the golf course. When he showed Crist how the drone could perform, the boss got board approval to make a "virtual tour" of the course with drone footage. Tomhave would get paid for what started out as a hobby.

He taught himself how to operate the drone. He has learned details and graphic expertise from books and videos. When operating the drone, he can see what he is filming and control altitude, air speed, and perspective.

"I originally bought the drone several years ago because at the time it was the start of the trend and there were only a few inspiring photos on the internet," Tomhave said. "At that point I would never have imagined that I would be able to combine my work and hobbies into something that I could make money off of."

Not only has the drone work presented a new and different viewpoint of the Cloquet Country Club, but Tomhave has captured some spectacular fall color pictures of the Jay Cooke State Park area and the Temperance River on the North Shore.

Tomhave is a 2018 graduate of Cloquet High School. Due to the pandemic, all of his classes as a sophomore at Bowdoin College in Maine, two hours north of Boston, are online. He has been able to stay at home in Cloquet. For the past two summers, Tomhave has cut greens and fairways and been part of the course maintenance crew at the golf club.

The 18-hole virtual tour is up and running on the Cloquet Country Club website. It took about five days to film the entire course. It took at least that long to do the editing and add graphics. Tomhave says filming was best after the course has been freshly cut with not many cart marks on the grass. Virtual tours are often used as a marketing tool to showcase a facility to potential and current players and members.

Tomhave was a tennis star for the Lumberjacks. He won the individual section title one year and was runnerup another, both of which qualified him for the state tournament, where he won matches. It was academics that drew him to Bowdoin, a liberal arts college with about 2,000 students. He is an economics major with plans to someday have a job related to the stock market.

He doesn't play competitive tennis at Bowdoin but is on the crew team.

"Not around here, but in East Coast colleges, crew and lacrosse are big sports," Tomhave said. His grandfather on his mom's side was on the Yale crew team.

"It was a unique opportunity to switch sports after having played tennis for close to 15 years," he said. "The same hard work and concentration is just as important in crew as it was in tennis. Crew and tennis are both one of the toughest but also relatively unknown endurance sports, and I am fortunate Bowdoin offered me the opportunity."

When asked about any peculiar drone filming sightings, he said he saw deer and a bear running on the fairways in Cloquet. He says he isn't sure, but he might have seen the tail end of a timber wolf as well.

Tomhave is having fun with his hobby. "I would love to work on a project combining the drone with my love of fly fishing," he said. "But I'm not currently working on any drone projects until the snow comes in and there's a new landscape to photograph."

He said he's open to ideas. "I'm always keeping my eyes and ears open for new opportunities," he said. "I am open to do any type of work from land surveying to exploratory or photography work."

He still has his sights on school but the drone experience has him thinking. "I still have my mind set on an economics career," he said. "The more passionate I have become about the drone work, I validate the importance of in the future being able to leave work behind and immerse myself in the wilderness. Who knows though, if the perfect opportunity arose to work with clients and fly drones for a living, who wouldn't pass that up?"

Those with interest in Tomhave's work can call him at 218-600-9848 or email [email protected].