The cameras rolled, the cue was given, and the Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner and Frank Nobilo welcomed the TV audience to the PGA Tour’s first full-field event of 2013 at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

For the next three and a half hours, viewers were treated to live coverage of 72 afternoon golfers starting the new year with dreams of claiming the $1,008,000 check given to the winner.

The sun was shining, the winds weren’t blowing, and two PGA Tour rookies were tearing up the Waialae Country Club course where the tournament has been held since 1965.

All seemed fine and dandy to viewers treated to the best golf Hawaii has to offer.

For the group of 75 workers behind the scenes, however, this was as unusual as any golf telecast they had ever been a part of.

"IN 25 YEARS OF DOING THIS, that was probably the scariest it has ever been for me."

John Boeddeker is the daredevil among the crew.

Week after week, Boeddeker is the cameraman providing aerial shots of balls whistling toward greens from his perch on a camera tower more than 100 feet in the air.

It was there where the true power of Kapalua was felt as winds gusting to 50 mph and rain made a mess of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions last week.

Boeddeker likens his job to doing a dance, saying "You have to work the camera like a dance partner — very fluid because you don’t want to be jerky and throw some guy off the couch, but you don’t want to do anything too fast up there either because the whole tower will move."

Unfortunately, the tower was moving with or without him.

The season-opening event was delayed a record three days due to high wind and rain. Scores weren’t officially counted until Monday, when players battled through 36 holes before Tuesday’s 18-hole finish.

Finally, after five days, Dustin Johnson was crowned champion, winning on tour for the sixth consecutive year.

It marked the end of a rough weekend for the players. But for the crew, the real work was just about to begin.

WHEN THE OPENING montage rolled at 2 p.m. on Thursday, producer Tommy Roy said, about 30 percent of the equipment he usually has was up and running.

"We have like 32 cameras here and we had 10 of them ready," said Roy, a 28-time Emmy Award winner who has produced events including the Olympics.

The crew had less than a day to set up production for the broadcast, as equipment, which includes 11 trucks, had to be shipped on a barge from Maui that didn’t arrive until Wednesday afternoon.

The 20 hours between arrival and the broadcast is thought to be the shortest turnaround time ever for a PGA Tour event. Camera towers and broadcast booths were still being set up as players teed off on Thursday, making the job even more difficult as workers had to complete their tasks without making serious noise.

At times, it was pandemonium trying to get cameras set up to cover a course that spans 7,000 yards.

But even that was nothing compared to what goes on inside the production truck.

CONTROLLED CHAOS.

There really isn’t a better way to describe the atmosphere inside the truck during a telecast.

A group of six people, with Roy in command, is tasked with monitoring an entire golf course at once.

Twenty-one screens, many divided into nine mini-screens, give the team a chance to see everything.

Standing behind Roy is Tom Randolph, who is constantly checking each screen, looking for who is about to do what.

Director Doug Grabert waits for Randolph or Roy’s call to cue up an image on the preview screen that’s directly right of the screen with the actual live shot. A technical director sits to the right of Grabert, a control panel filled with buttons and switches at his disposal, ready to add graphics to the shot.

Getting the proper camera shots on air isn’t Roy’s only task.

He also has a broadcast team all over the course that he needs to communicate with to know who needs to say what and when.

Lerner and Nobilo are in a booth just off the 17th green, going strictly by what they see on monitors in front of them and what is being fed through a headset.

Twenty-two-year veteran Roger Maltbie is joined on the course by Jerry Foltz and Notah Begay III, who is working a broadcast for the first time.

Local resident Mark Rolfing sits in the 15th tower and Gary Koch handles tower duties from the 17th hole as they somehow keep every shot covered.

"It’s the most difficult sporting event to televise by far," Rolfing said. "You’re trying to keep tabs of 140 players with no stoppages of play and no markings of a field."

BY THE TIME a champion is crowned this afternoon, the heavy work has already been done.

It’s been an hour since the last spikes pierced the greens on the front nine.

The names have dwindled to a select few that will challenge to become the event’s 10th winner in as many years.

Once it’s over, the equipment will be back in the trucks and heading to Hualalai for the Mitsubishi Electric Championship, the season-opening event on the Champions Tour.

The on-air talent will head to the West Coast for next week’s PGA Tour event in La Quinta, Calif.

Locals will hurry back to Waialae to play the same course the pros did, finding out how well they match up with the world’s best.

All will once again feel normal. But to the 75 people who served on this week’s crew at Waialae, this week will mean something special.

"It’s unbelievable what has taken place," Maltbie said. "Of all the places you might travel, the least you’d expect what happened is Hawaii.

"What these guys did to turn it around and get this setup ready for here is truly an amazing accomplishment."