Morning Read Mailbag: Sounding Off on the PGA Championship Broadcasts
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Let the Pictures Talk
I could not agree more with John Hawkins' assessment of the PGA media coverage. Also, their preliminary split screen coverage with constant chatter was little more than a distraction.
Many years ago, the producer who pioneered golf coverage, Frank Chirkinian, made a very cogent observation and gave a simple instruction to his announcers: "if you've nothing to say, shut up" (or something to that effect). In short, "the picture tells the story." Making either excuses or overblown explanations of what we can already see is overkill. Yes, of course, on occasion some is warranted. However, it seems that the viewer is seen as uneducated in the vagaries of golf's bad and good moments. If you've played the game it requires absolutely no explanation! It's humbling, It's tragic, it's wonderful, and it's addictive all at once.
Somehow it's assumed that's not self-explanatory and that the announcers are fearful that any moment of silence will somehow not be tolerated without their filling the void. Golf presents itself as a microcosm of life: we all screw up and none of us, regardless of our level of expertise, is without fault. Call it what it is: "He screwed up!" End of story.
Ky McCarthy
Fairport, New York
In the Tour's pocket
In response to John Hawkins' commentary on CBS' coverage of the PGA Championship (Media Buffet: As Contenders Fell Short Sunday at the PGA, So Did Insightful Commentary from CBS) I would add that CBS and pretty much every other source of golf coverage is in the pocket of the PGA Tour.
According to the Tour, every member is a "fine young man." Besides some no longer being young, anyone with any life experience knows that in a group of that size there are several, perhaps quite a few, who are far from fine. In fact, there are some who are jerks, sobs and several other pejoratives unfit for publication. You would never know this from the fawning coverage the Tour receives. As Hawkins points out, this even extends to the coverage of their performance with no actual comments on what are clearly abject failures and chokes under pressure. Johnny Miller is greatly missed in these moments.
We could use some more guts in tour coverage.
Blaine Walker
St. Paul, Minnesota
Insights and Cliches
OK, I basically agree with about everything John said especially “not that anyone at CBS will lose a minute of sleep over such an appraisal.” Monopolies rule. If there are no other options other than possibly for a fee.
One thing I did not think was particularly insightful was the Strange comment about Tiger’s bunker play – that is basically the same statement they make about every player who hasn’t played in over two weeks – “He’s a little rusty on the short game as to be expected not having played tournament golf for weeks”. Just phoned that one in. I may have misinterpreted your intent on that one.
Let’s add in the other “once he wins the floodgates will open and he’ll win many more”. That goes with the “surprised he hasn’t won more” statement. By my rough calculations there would need to be about 140 PGA tournaments a year for the announcers' expectations to be met.
On the ESPN coverage, I really liked the coverage where they went from player to player showing them hit their shot without two minutes of B.S. before each shot. I really like seeing the shots more “live” and not selected after or just by the featured players. It gives a much better idea of how the play really is on tour instead of just seeing mostly the best shots. I’m a little more forgiving of my play when I see that the top players in the world don’t hit great shots as often as the coverage would like us to believe.
Scott Dobrowolski
Renton, Washington