Just When I Thought I Was Out...

Forgive The Godfather homage, but I had intended to return to our regularly-scheduled programming... But like the ill-fated Michael Corleone, the longer-form pieces are now appearing, and I'm being pulled back in.  It seems everyone wants a piece of the Fox....

Chris Chase trashes the USGA very harshly in his USA Today piece, as per this lede:

How much is bad publicity, critical reviews and ratings worth? What price can you put

on becoming a laughingstock because of a television partner that was so awful and inexperienced that its mere presence sunk one of the most thrilling golf championships of the past few decades?

Thirteen million dollars, that’s what. That’s the difference between what Fox offered per year to the USGA for rights to the U.S. Open ($93 million) than longtime partner NBC ($80 million). Was the extra money worth it? Was turning its back on NBC the right call?

C'mon Chris, tell us how you really feel...  Chris continues to spray spittle with this:

In that announcement, the USGA wrote: “The game is evolving and requires bold and unique approaches on many levels, and FOX shares our vision to seek fresh thinking and innovative ideas to deliver championship golf.”

If that unique approach was losing the ball off the tee, misidentifying players’ home countries, staying completely silent before Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson were hitting makable eagle putts on No. 18 for the win and completely ignoring Spieth while Johnson was putting for a victory, then to force a playoff, then, yes, Fox did something unique. If the goal was to become more popular than The Masters, don’t count on it. And only national pride and time zones will keep the Open ahead of its British counterpart.

Heh!  I do think he's being unduly harsh here, as it's not like NBC never lost a ball in the air or didn't know where a shot ended up, and the terrain at Chambers was far more hostile an environment for coverage...and one last bit, which mirrors my initial concerns regarding Fox:

Not this year, as Fox had too many people on air and microphones everywhere, making the proceedings sound as loud as a showing of Jurassic World. It was unbearable. Golf is a tranquil sport. Fox doesn’t do tranquil. Golf isn’t sexy. Fox wants it to be. You see the issues?

Yeah, the universal response to the announcement of the contract was along the lines of, "Fox?  Really?"  But I'm going to call BS on this conclusion:

After its self-inflicting damage to the U.S. Open brand, maybe the question isn’t whether the USGA made the wrong cash grab, but whether Fox overpaid for a brand it had to know it would tarnish?.

I'm as critical of Fox as the next incredibly astute and influential blogger, but the U.S. Open is as valuable a property today as it was a week ago.  he's giving Fox far too much credit... 

Richard Sandomir writing in the Times is also critical, though it's all the more devastating for its temperate tone:

For Greg Norman, it was a moment to define himself in his first United States Open as

the lead analyst. Dustin Johnson was on the 18th green on Sunday with a chance to win if he sank an eagle putt. What was Norman’s assessment of the putt? Would it go left or right? What sort of speed should he put on it? Norman said nothing. Johnson missed. 

Now, Johnson had to try for a birdie to tie Jordan Spieth and set up a playoff for Monday. What did Norman say as Johnson prepared to putt? “Not an easy one.” That was all.

This is spot on, given that the players were complaining all week that it was difficult to hit the putts with enough speed to hold their line.  As I explained in the moment to Employee No. 2, the more he tries to make the eagle putt the more resigned he'll have to be to a 5-footer coming back.  A real missed opportunity for the Shark.

Sandomir provides a bullet-point list of flaws and, while there's room to quibble, most are well argued and fair.  I'm much more willing than he to give Fox some slack on the audio side, as while it's true that they messed up by allowing some inadvertent audio to be heard, the mic in the cup allowed us to hear Jordan explaining to Greller why he missed a putt.  And who doesn't want to hear that?

This is the close of Sandomir's piece, a rather prescient Johnny Miller quote:

Miller predicted in 2013 that Fox would have, at best, growing pains. After hearing that Fox had outbid NBC, Miller said, “You can’t just fall out of a tree and do the U.S. Open.” Early in Round 1, Buck said, “We’ve dropped out of a tree onto your TV.” And too often, that was precisely how it looked.

I'm well-known as a glass-half-full kind of guy, but it seems to me the lingering question is how are they going to improve, given their limited broadcast schedule?  

Shack linked to both these pieces, and has some interesting commentary.  I may actually quibble more with Geoff than with the two authors above.  But first, he gave Fox's streaming coverage high marks:

Furthermore, the strong performance by the digital streams and record viewer response to those alternative broadcasts revealed some fun Fox innovations and forward-thinking that were hardly seen on the network broadcast.

That's fair enough, though I'd like to know what those innovations were and how substantial the increases were.  But using the streaming coverage to test technology isn't a bad call methinks.  This next bit is entirely fair, as there was a tone of hubris evident in the broadcast:

The social mediasphere was harsh, but Fox invited some of the vitriol by allowing Joe Buck to declare in pre-championship hype that they would bring a fresh, innovative approach. Buck opened the broadcast with a jab at Johnny Miller’s remark upon learning that Fox would be starting its golf broadcasting foray at the U.S. Open. The brief bit of humility displayed at last fall's Shark Shootout was no where to be seen.

But see what you think of this rant:

Yet the anger expressed toward the USGA and Executive Director Mike Davis by the likes of Billy Horschel, Ian Poulter and others was clearly a response to Fox's sugarcoating of the effort by their "partners" at the USGA. Other than a refined explanation of the putting surface issue by Gil Hanse on Sunday and some forthright comments on the digital streams, hosts Buck and Norman went into hard sell mode on the great setup efforts and generally downplayed the turfgrass issues. They were chatting with Davis during Friday's telecast for one of his three lengthy in-booth visits as a former U.S. Open champion and a pre-tournament favorite, Justin Rose, was making a triple bogey at the par-4 18th. The audio featured discussion of fescue grass and Norman's suggestion that he'd like to play heather on the property, all set to visuals of Rose taking himself out of contention. The episode gave the impression that messaging for the USGA took priority over the playing of the national championship.

Shack has been highly critical of Fox for their kid gloves treatment of the USGA, and that's a fair subject.  I'm not going to pretend to remember whether NBC's tone was any more critical at Shinnecock or indulge in guessing about how Johnny and Co. would have treated the greens.

But the anger of Horschel and Poulter had little to nothing to do with Fox... they were pissed at Mike Davis for sure, but Mike also appeared in the press room for the rest of the golf media to question.

And Geoff, are you serious about the Justin Rose comment?  Mike is a busy guy and they picked a time for him to stop by the set...  It was entirely appropriate to devote the time to his set-up decisions, and there's nothing short of a lightning storm that strikes Rory McIlroy that can't be adequately covered a few minutes later...

And yes, this was a most curious example of the USGA admitting to error and having Fox play lapdog:

Another example landed during Tom O’Toole’s in-booth visit where the outgoing USGA president conceded adjustments would have to be made to Chambers Bay so that fans could see play at a future U.S. Open there. To which Norman launched into a declaration that there was 100% approval for the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay from the “masses” he queried during a walk of the grounds.

Before we go, I'll just juxtapose this Shack rant:

The importance of USGA "brand identiy" as focal point over our national championship was reinforced by the absurdity of a stark red USGA logo on screen (sometimes in two spots), always at the expense of “U.S. Open” mentions on the lower right leaderboard. The USGA branding overpowered the player names and even the Fox logo. Backdrops for interviews and other moments empahsized the USGA logo, not the U.S. Open name or logo. The overall look cemented the impression of Fox being asked to sell the “brand” of the USGA. With a mess of a telecast, the USGA brand obsession distracted from celebrating the history, people and story of America’s national championship.

Yet this was exactly the partnership vision set forth by the those who orchestrated the move to Fox: former USGA president Glen Nager and (brief) Executive Committee member Gary Stevenson. Starting with the 2015 U.S. Open telecast, they got exactly what they wanted in a partner. But as the first telecast revealed, having a partner selling the USGA brand came at a huge price to the U.S. Open's image as a premier sporting event.

And to think a week ago we were responding to allegations that Shack only criticized peons like Matt Every because they had no power.  But Geoff also reminds us of  this important comment from the late-great Frank Hannigan:

As the late Frank Hannigan warned, the USGA wants to be loved and that's not their core mission. The resulting product put forward by Fox at Chambers Bay, where the USGA's brand became the focal point over the championship, confirmed his worst fears.

I'll concur that a governing body that's loved is probably weak on the governance thing...  but think of that every time you see the USGA brand commercials, and especially of how much of their $13 million windfall is so consumed.

But be of good cheer golf fans, only eleven more Fox U.S. Opens...