Midweek Musings

Lots to cover, likely with an emphasis on all things TV.  

On a scheduling note, I'm currently planning to head to Utah on Friday morning, so we might not meet again until Monday.  Unless, you know, something compels me to the keyboard tomorrow.  But what are the odds?

 

I Saw It On TV - The major golf publications have long functioned in the role of Pravda, but they also seem to be carrying water for CBS as well, at least as far as one could tell from this open-mouth kiss:

Changes coming to CBS golf coverage under new leadership in 2021

For anyone unfamiliar with this annual ritual, this is the week that the Tour heads to Torrey Pines, and things get real.  Well, as real as they can get inside the pampered bubble of elite men's professional golf.  Those first few weeks of the year (not of the season, counter-intuitively) are really quite ugly, as professional golf vies against the NFL playoffs for an audience, and finds none.  More on that in just a bit...

Meet the new boss, presumably same as the old boss, an enjoy the vainglorious framing:

It’s not just the most exclusive job in golf, it’s one of the most exclusive jobs on earth.

Since 1959, there have been 62 Masters champions. Tiger Woods has won 82 times. Thirteen

U.S. Presidents have held office. Myanmar has installed three governments (and has gone by three different names).

And Golf on CBS has had two coordinating producers.

The network’s incredible run on talent began in 1959, when Frank Chirkinian — the father of golf television — was hired as the network’s first true “lead” golf producer. Chirkinian radically changed the way golf television was viewed, introducing the concept of scores “over” and “under” par, instant replay, and even the practice of spray-painting the edges of holes white. In 1997, Chirkinian was succeeded by Lance Barrow, his protégé, who commandeered the network’s coverage for the next 23 years.

On Saturday, the number of coordinating producers in Golf on CBS history expands to three.

Talent?  OK, I'll stipulate to that as far as the Ayatollah is concerned, but have you not watched a recent CBS broadcast.  So, the only thing I know for sure about the new guy is that he has quite the weird name:

“I’m thrilled to welcome Sellers Shy to our role as the coordinating producer,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said on a conference call previewing the 2021 season. “He’s the perfect person to carry the mantle from Lance Barrow. When you think about the heritage and the shoes he’s stepping into, it’s pretty august company.”

Sellers Shy, a veteran producer whose time on the CBS Golf team dates back to 1987, begins his post as the network’s third coordinating producer at 3 p.m. ET Saturday at the Farmers Insurance Open. Shy is a Memphis native and decorated former junior golfer — a talented, multi-sport producer for CBS who succeeds the newly retired Lance Barrow.

“I have ultimate faith in Sellers, he’s got a great production mind,” McManus said. “He lives and breathes golf, 52 weeks a year. He’s innovative, he’s organized, he works incredibly well with talent, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Sellers is going to bring us forward.”

Were his parents Pink Panther fans?  Of course, I'd like to ask Mr. McManus what the broadcast needs to be brought forward from, though that might get ugly.  So, let's just sit back and see what these "changes" might be...  

“We’ve worked very hard on making sure that there is a slight difference, a re-energized few areas,” Shy said. “All I’m going to do is repeat what Sean (McManus) said and say that we’re really excited about it. In the first hour, you might see three, four, maybe even five new looks.”

Among the most significant changes: new music, updated graphics and a constant mini scoreboard in the lower righthand corner of the screen. The goal, Shy says, is to keep the leaderboard on-screen on a near-constant basis, similar to the score bugs used in other professional sports broadcasts.

How's that for an all-world mission statement?  They've worked very hard to make a slight difference...  Or, translated into English, the deck chairs have been rearranged.  But to a golf audience screaming for them to show some actual golf, perhaps you'd enjoy new theme music....

But wait, there's more:

“We like to think that viewers love the score bug on football and on basketball, and we’re attempting to make that a standard position for golf for our mini-leaderboard,” Shy said. “I’d like to think that whenever anyone comes in the room and they want to know who’s leading the tournament, you’re going to find out very shortly.”

It's that "We'd like" that grabbed me, as I'm equally certain that they'd like to think we enjoy their broadcast, though the truth is out there.  As for that guy that just came in the room?  Nice of you to worry about him, but you might give a thought to the far heavier traffic going the opposite direction.

We've touched on golf ratings a couple of times in recent weeks, but the latest numbers should be sending up flares at Fortress Ponte Vedra Beach.  I'll lean heavily on Geoff's post here, riffing on these golf ratings from ShowBuzzDaily:

Yes, you are reading that correctly, the LPGA kicked Jay Monahan's butt:

With the two NFL games drawing audiences of 41 and 44 million thereabouts, golf had little chance. There were more people trying to scrape the last bit of guac out of the bowl at any given time than watching golf.

 Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers. With a very strong microscope.

For reasons known only to people who draw six and seven figure salaries, the LPGA Tour and PGA Tour continued their bizarre tradition of trying to finish against the NFL’s conference championship games.

The 2021 final rounds of the Diamond Resorts TOC and American Express Championship played out on NBC and Golf Channel respectively. Both were better-than-average finishes, with the LPGA averaging 557,000 viewers to the PGA Tour’s 297,000 according to ShowBuzzDaily.

The LPGA’s season opener drew an almost identical number last year on NBC.

My first reaction, which I've noted recently, is that the biggest loser in this would seem to be American Express.  I simply can't understand why they would tie themselves to the weakest event on the Tour's calendar, weak not least because of the, well, week it's played.  But they're consenting adults, so Unless you're an Amex shareholder...

I will note that a certain event has carved out a model for competing with the biggest NFL game of all.  I speak of course of the Wasted, which draws the vast Mongol hordes to their event every year, despite finishing on Super Bowl Sunday.  That event peaks on Saturday, but they're Sunday crowds and TV ratings are respectable, though admittedly they finish before kickoff.

I do have one more item on the men, before we segue to the ladies.  I guess this makes sense:

The next joint effort by the PGA Tour to cater to the ever-growing populace of golf bettors and

fantasy players will be unveiled the week of the Waste Management Phoenix Open. NBC Sports will produce a second-screen broadcast geared specifically to gamblers and broadcasted on Peacock Premium, in partnership with PointsBet, an official betting operator of the PGA Tour and the official betting partner of NBC Sports.

The show, “NBC Sports Edge Betcast,” will debut on Thursday of WMPO week and include two Golf Channel staffers, Steve Burkowski and George Savaricas, on a set overlooking the famed 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale, along with Teddy Greenstein of PointsBet. The broadcast, according to David Preschlack, executive vice president of content strategy for NBC Sports Group and president of NBC Sports’ regional networks, will follow a featured group, similar to PGA Tour Live, but the announcers will be discussing various betting markets and player odds on each hole for 2½ hours each tournament day.

First, CBS has the Super Bowl this year, so NBC jumps in to cover Phoenix when that happens.  But, does this sound remotely interesting?  Can't wait to see these numbers...

I do think it makes sense to keep this nonsense out of the flagship broadcast at the very least.  They're already \not showing enough actual golf shots, so better to avoid another tangent for them to fetishize.

So, the ladies have been on a high since that final round of their season-opening event, one that several commentators (Dylan Dethier, call your office) deemed the best possible kick-off. Let me also note that, while your humble blogger has had some concerns about Mike Whan's network fetish, last weekend's ratings would seem to support his strategy.  That said, it's still a tiny audience, and I've noted several times any absence of the needs to actively attract their audience, they seem to consider it a birthright.

If you think last week's LPGA event cannot be improved upon, you might want to reconsider.  The Fried Egg's Will Knights fires a warning shot that will go unheeded:

With Jessica Korda in close on the 16th hole of the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, Danielle Kang knew she needed to make a birdie of her own to maintain her one-shot lead. Putting from off the green, Kang was interrupted by a gas cart starting up to shuttle volunteers back to the clubhouse. She went back to the beginning of her pre-shot routine, only to be interrupted again. “I’m just going to wait,” Kang said, laughing it off. “We’ll be waiting on the next tee anyways.”

The final round of the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions was an opportunity for the LPGA Tour to start 2021 with a bang. Three top American players—Danielle Kang, Nelly Korda, and Jessica Korda—separated themselves from the field and were ready for a Sunday showdown on network television.

It turned out to be a worthy battle. The Korda sisters both made charges at Kang, and Jessica prevailed with a playoff birdie. Yet for viewers at home, the day looked like a failure.

 Failure might be a tad strong, but you'd like to think they see the problem:

The first hour of Sunday’s telecast on Golf Channel was decent, highlighting shots from most of the women in the field. But when NBC took over for the final nine—you know, when the most

important part of the tournament was unfolding—the coverage became borderline unwatchable. The broadcast was filled with celebrity interviews, commercials, and other nonsense that distracted from three of the best players in the world vying for a title. According to one intrepid viewer, nearly 63% percent of the broadcast was devoted to something other than a professional golfer hitting a golf shot.

More egregious than the lack of televised shots, however, was the pace of play. At multiple points on the back nine, the Korda-Korda-Kang group waited more than 10 minutes between shots. One of those pauses consumed NBC’s opening segment. The first 13 minutes of the network’s broadcast featured just one shot from an LPGA Tour player: a putt from Lexi Thompson. We didn’t see anything from the final group until well into the coverage—not because NBC was avoiding them, but because the leaders were waiting on the 13th tee.

If you were interrogating a prisoner and wanted to break him, making him watched Lexi putt on an endless loop would be pretty effective.

In this case, it does seem that the amateur component was over-emphasized:

Here’s what it came down to: three of the most marketable Americans in the women’s game were MIA in the opening minutes of a national telecast because they were stuck behind a retired tennis pro, a former NFL kicker, and the Yankees center fielder. Those amateurs were, in turn, stuck behind other amateurs ahead of them.

So the poor viewing experience wasn’t entirely NBC’s fault. Of the 90 players in the field, just 25 were professionals, some of whom had finished their rounds by the time NBC’s coverage started. With Kang and the Korda sisters dusting the rest of the field, the network didn’t have many in-the-hunt pros to show.

I think I saw more of Aaron Hicks than Nelly Korda, and that doesn't exactly convey a sense of confidence in your core product.  And you humble blogger is a die-hard Yankees fan, though I also saw more of Aaron Hicks on Sunday than I did in the entire 60-game 2020 baseball season so, yeah, I'm bitter.

Will makes this strong point as well:

Granted, pro-ams have been a part of pro golf for decades, the most famous (or infamous) being the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. CBS’s Saturay coverage of the tournament is almost always one of the most dreadful viewing experiences of the PGA Tour season: nonstop footage of B-listers and athletes hitting terrible shots and giving vapid interviews about how much fun they’re having and how beautiful the course looks.

But that’s Saturday. On Sunday, when the tournament is actually on the line, CBS shifts the focus to the pros and their efforts to win at one of the country’s finest courses.

It's still CBS, so that focus is still a bit tenuous...  But while Will makes a strong case, pace of play at regular LPGA events is equally dreadful, and causes the same issues with continuity of coverage.

I may be over-interpreting, but whoever succeeds Mike Whan better be focused on delivering a better product.  Of course, effective January 20, 2021, women's sports are, well, about to be sacrificed to the gods of equity and inclusion.  I'm sure we'll all enjoy that... 

Failing Upward - I totally get that he's a nice man, and there's nothing wrong with that.  But when your resume high-points are as follows:

1. Presiding over the biggest collapse in Ryder Cup history, and;
2. Flaming out as an on-course broadcaster before the press release ink has dried.

Wouldn't you think that the next gig would be, you know, hard to arrange?  But a warning, be sure to control your excitement:

Davis Love III, who as a Charlotte native was the logical choice to lead the United States team in

next year’s Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow Club, has enjoyed longer ties to the biennial competition than any other player in PGA Tour history.

Love played in the inaugural Presidents Cup in 1994 in Virginia, but he actually learned that previous fall that the tour was creating its own event fashioned after the Ryder Cup. A player rep on the tour’s board, Love was sharing an airplane with Tim Finchem as they headed to a board meeting. Finchem at the time was the tour’s deputy commissioner under Deane Beman, and he definitely knew his audience.

Weeks earlier, Love had emerged as one of the heroes in what remains America’s last Ryder Cup victory in Europe, winning the last two holes against Costantino Rocca to score the clinching point for Team USA at The Belfry.

The header calls him the perfect pick, yet the author can't get through the second 'graph without noting the long history of failure...  What rankles most is that the principal authors of those repetitive failures  continue to take care of each other:

Interestingly, it was Woods who informed Love just before Christmas that he would be the next U.S. captain after the 1997 PGA Championship winner served as an assistant captain for three straight matches, beginning in 2013 under Fred Couples at Muirfield Village Golf Club. Love wasn’t exactly surprised. Since Quail Hollow was announced as site of the 2021 matches—pushed to 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic forcing postponement of the 2020 Ryder Cup—it was thought that Love, a two-time Ryder Cup captain, would lead the U.S. squad in the state where he was born and where he attended college and became a three-time All-American at the University of North Carolina.

“It was really cool that Tiger called me and said, ‘Hey, um, we have decided that you're going to be Presidents Cup captain in Charlotte,” said Love, whose initial reaction to Woods was to ask in reply, “Who’s we?”

Well, that would be Tiger and Phil, since you asked...  And their record?  He's unsuccessful and he's boring, so the qualifications were what exactly?  Socialism is fine, kids, as long as you're part of the nomenklatura...

Tulsa On My Mind - We have a wiener, folks, as we know where to head in May 2022.  The PGA of America is taking us back to Southern Hills, and Geoff is happy for the following reasons:

Not August

I carry three distinct memories from an early week trek to the 1994 PGA. It was impossibly hot. I got to meet Dan Jenkins. And I’m still haunted by the moment when opening the pro shop’s small

front door on Wednesday afternoon. Standing there was Jose Maria Olazabal wondering when I’d get out of his way. He was headed for the locker room. Hopefully the reigning Masters champion was headed for the shower. He carried with him a bodily odor unlike any other. Think packed Paris subway car during a heat wave.

 Thanks for sharing, but the PGA of America developed quite the specialty in steamy August venues...

Strange things happen at Southern Hills

The winner of the 1946 U.S. Women’s Amateur had her status reinstated in the middle of a 1931-1954 run winning six AP Female Athlete’s of the Year. They even let Babe Zaharias and the field in the clubhouse that week, no sure thing back then. In 1958 Tommy Bolt (71-71-69-72) was the only player to not post a round higher than 75 in winning the U.S. Open over 22-year-old Gary Player. Hubert Green captured a U.S. Open with a death threat hanging over his head. Tiger Woods was the first to shoot 62.5 in a major, right? And the 2001 U.S. Open finish was totally bizarre.

Yowzer, I'm not sure those names will resonated with today's Live Under Par™ crowd.   And while that 2001 finish was as wacky as Geoff notes, is that one we actually want to remember?

This would seem more the point:

A replenished new-old design

Good players win at Southern Hills because they have to hit every shot from all kinds of stances. So while it’s always been a beautiful property for golf, the camera has never been kind to Southern Hills. Some of that dramatic ground movement and the best natural features were shaded out. That’s now changed. Maxwell’s most renowned work has seen bunkers returned to their original location with enhanced character. The green shapes recaptured lost hole locations and creeks have been exposed by tree removal.

The reference is to the recent Gil Hanse restoration, which is likely a good thing indeed.  That said, I can't imagine that the course will televise especially well, but it should prove to be a fine test.

Back To TPC - It was twenty years ago today...  Yeah, not really, but it does feel like it, no?  Via the local Jacksonville paper, we have details on the Players Championship:

Monday morning, Players Championship Executive Director Jared Rice announced the

tournament will allow spectators for the $15 million tournament. Attendance will be limited to 20% of capacity.

“We feel that hits our priority of how we can deliver the tournament in a healthy way and with the safety of everybody in mind: Our sponsors, our fans, our volunteers. All of that is mission critical to us,” Rice said.

“…From a hospitality perspective, we have modified everything. So, that means in hospitality zones we will have open-air venues. We’re looking for ways to make sure it's as safe as possible, limiting some access there. From a fan perspective, we are looking at ways we can focus on social distancing as part of the food and beverage experience and make it great for our fans.”

And capacity would be how many?  I find it strange that such an article doesn't answer the most basic of questions, how many spectators will be on site.  Of course, your humble blogger is in no position to throw the first stone as relates to typos and the like, but aren't these folks supposed to have proofreaders:

Since the PGA Tour returned in June, it has welcomed fans at a handful of events. Former Players Champions Si Woo Kim won The American Express in La Quinta, California, on Sunday afternoon without no fans in attendance.

So there were fans?

Most importantly, CTRL:F - Chainsmokers yields zero results.

Your Strange Read of the Day -  Eamon Lynch is a guy with strong opinions, so we love having him in our golf ecosystem.  Mind you, some days we love him more than others, but his current offering is a bit curious.  See if you agree...

The premise is contained in his header (though only a portion thereof):

Lynch: PGA Tour needs to plan for life without Tiger.

I'm guessing you have a couple of complementary reactions to that.  First, it's a header we've seen repeatedly for more than a decade now, and simultaneously there can't be anything new to say on this subject.  Yet, Eamon goes in quite the strange direction:

The Tour’s now-discontinued marketing slogan, ‘These Guys Are Good,’ was always closer to a doctrine than a catchphrase, reflecting a desire to present players as beyond reproach, a traveling caravan of upright, family-loving philanthropists who wouldn’t as much as look sideways at a puppy. As image-making goes, it was resolutely sober, highly successful and wholly synthetic. There’s not a family or workplace in America where that actually holds true, and certainly not in a lucrative sport peopled with driven individuals.

I'm sorry, is that how you understood These guys are good?  Because I took it to mean that these guys are very skilled at the golf thing, and found it refreshingly limited in its scope.  

Now Eamon is quite correct that the Tour has tried to has tried to curtail any coverage of the more unseemly aspects of life on Tour, and he's on solid ground here.  I've been all over this subject, including the refusal to share disciplinary actions and the aggressive take-down notices to social media platforms, but the marketing slogan was pitch perfect.  I'm in complete agreement with Eamon here:

That entrenched mindset will need to transition as the Tour faces a future post-Tiger. There must be a willingness to let fans see a handful of part-time sinners while it deifies the full-time saints. It won’t take much: making disciplinary infractions public, ceasing the habitual clamping down on public needling between players, not smothering any online video that casts players in an unflattering light. In short, the PGA Tour needs to cast-off its girdle, to demonstrate less maternal protectiveness and more fraternal playfulness when it comes to it’s product.

I think that's an important point.  The Tour's posture under Nurse Ratched was to stifle any story that might cast aspersion in its members.  Fact is, I think the tour's members are in large part a good group of guys, and hiding disciplinary actions and the like just makes me suspicious that there's much more that we should know.  I would think the better strategy is to let the chips fall where they may, and let the public decide about these guys based upon the preponderance of the evidence.

 But Eamon's solution for the post-Tiger tour seems, well, curious:

Which is why DeChambeau strikes me as the ideal prototype to meet golf’s uncertain future. Not because of his performance—though he could deliver in that respect too—but because of his personality, his almost endearing eagerness to put himself and his process out there in painstaking (sometimes cringeworthy) detail. To wit: in his first start of the year at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, DeChambeau proudly revealed he’d been chasing swing speed so hard that he almost blacked out. (“I blacked out a few times over the break too,” one of his fellow Tour pros texted me with more than a hint of derision).

Eamon, did you catch any of the golf in 2020?  Maybe the bit where Bryson confronted the cameraman and spoke eloquently about his brand?

I think it's silly to think in terms of any one player filling that void, but Eamon seems clueless as to how off-putting Bryson can be.  That's not the worst thing in the world, necessarily, as any entertainment can use its villains:

DeChambeau’s transparency has helped him become a figure of fascination, of admiration, of awe, of mockery and of scorn. That’s the menu sports fans demand be served, and he is a one-man banquet. Crucially, he seems able to handle that maelstrom. But DeChambeau is not the only box office personality about whom golf fans can and do feel conflicting emotions. There’s the trash-talking, pricklish Koepka, and a supporting cast that includes regular cameos by the dependably infantile Sergio Garcia, the volcanic Tyrrell Hatton and the [choose your own adjective] Patrick Reed.

But there logically needs to be someone in a white hat, and I'm just not sure that folks will ever warm up to Bryson in that way.  There's little doubt that Bryson is the most interesting player right now because he's experimenting and sharing the results thereof, I just don't think he's the poster child we need.

I shall release you here, and see you when I see you.