NBC/Golf Channel Top Dog Should Preach What He Practices

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

 

We’re just hours away from Super Bowl Sunday, a day that sees entire television networks offer up wall to wall coverage devoted to ONE sport. While that is one day for CBS and ESPN it just happens to be every day for the Golf Channel. I know, I was there for 18 years. Those of you who know me, or know this space, also know my job at Golf Channel was to produce live tournament coverage. For more than two decades (at GC and ESPN before that) it was my responsibility to decide which golfer to show on television during a golf tournament and how often to show him or her. I learned from two of the best in the business, Andy Young and Steve Beim, who showed me not only how to tell a story, but also create pace in an inherently slow sport by moving around the golf course and showing as many golf shots as possible. Some producers prefer to concentrate on a few players and show them for greater minutes, even when they aren’t executing a golf shot. I was not one of those producers and from what I can see neither is current NBC/Golf Channel head honcho Tommy Roy.

When I came to the Golf Channel in 1994 I espoused that coverage philosophy during our live tournament coverage. When we hit the airwaves in 1995 that’s exactly what we did. In fact, the network built an entire marketing campaign around it using two words… More Golf.

image

In the beginning I was the only one calling the shots but as the channel grew and acquired more broadcast rights the need for additional crews and production teams became apparent. We added more producers but it was still my job to encourage those “in the chair” to stay true to the original game plan, “show as much golf and as many players as possible.” Throughout my time in the truck I taped a groupings/pairings sheet on the console to my right. On it I could write, among other things, the name of the on course announcer I had assigned to various groups. I could also put a line through a player’s name when we showed him, or her, hit a shot on TV. I am proud to admit there were days when as many as 60 players had a line through their name at the end of a 4-hour broadcast. There are still a number of people producing live golf for Golf Channel but sadly I’m convinced there is only one who gives any thought to what I believe set the network apart in its formative years… showing More Golf.

I decided to bite the bullet and offer proof of this by sitting down and watching a full day of golf on Friday. As a fan of the sport I feel it’s the only thing that makes the Golf Channel watchable any more. Tournament golf, on TV, all day. The day started with live coverage of the Senior Tour, no wait, the Champions Tour, no wait, the PGA TOUR Champions, followed by an hour of live news programming from the Waste Management Phoenix Open, followed by live coverage of that golf tournament proper. The day was then capped off by tape delayed coverage of the LPGA in Ocala, Florida. Nine hours of tournament coverage with an additional hour of “news” thrown in there and I watched it all. I watched it with a purpose. I watched it to compare, tour, by tour, by tour and producer, by producer, by producer, exactly how many different players were shown hitting a golf shot at each venue. The exercise proved what I long knew to be true; Tommy Roy shows more golf than anyone else but sadly he doesn’t expect that philosophy to be followed by the people who work for him and should aspire to be him.

I believe every round is an opportunity to show as many players as possible but it’s easier to do that during early round coverage for several obvious reasons. First, there are more players on the golf course; Second, the biggest names are still competing; and Third, the storylines have yet to fully develop so a producer can bounce around more. Tommy Roy has always used early rounds to show a lot of golf and he did it again on Friday. But it’s so much easier to stick to a perceived script and concentrate on a few guys and ignore the rest of the field (what would Bernie Sanders say to that!?!). It’s a simple matter of convenience but it’s also a telling indication of confidence and competence. My day of watching golf and counting players started with the “old guys”.

Right off the bat I saw Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomerie and Tom Lehman in the early stages of their round. Don’t get me wrong those guys are among the biggest names on that tour and if I were in the truck on Friday I would show them too. Monty was grouped with Lehman. Jeff Maggert was the third. We saw them all. Langer was playing alongside Kenny Perry and Jeff Sluman and, as expected, they were all part of the broadcast too (though Sluman didn’t make an appearance until the last 15 minutes of the three hour telecast). Surprisingly we got a glimpse of Rod Spittle but no love for the fellow competitors in his threesome (Scott McCarron and Guy Boros). There was a shot of Carlos Franco but Willie Wood and Jay Don Blake, despite playing with Franco, weren’t worthy of inclusion. For some reason we got to see Dr. Gil Morgan hit a shot but not Mike Goodes or Kevin Sutherland (both past champions on the PGA TOUR Champions tour). There was Michael Allen but not Curtis Strange or Brad Faxon. Look its Craig Parry! But I had to look at the groupings, on line, to see the Aussie was playing with Mike Springer and Glen Day. Corey Pavin was leading so we got to see him but we didn’t get to see hide nor hair of John Huston or Scott Verplank. Fuzzy Zoeller got on TV a bunch (thank goodness!) but not Bob Tway or Jesper Parnevik.

I point all of this out not because I’m a huge fan of Gene Sauers and Bob Gilder (who didn’t get shown despite playing with Tom Purtzer who did) but because it actually takes more effort, in many cases, to not show guys than it does to show them. On average it takes somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds to show a shot (especially if that shot has been previously recorded) but instead of doing that we, as viewers were treated to Bernhard Langer, a legendary slowpoke, walk around a putt he was never going to make for a full 90 seconds. That’s at least four golf shots! Not to mention the guy we were watching (Langer) was never better than even par for the day while a dozen guys we weren’t watching (including Scott Hoch, Joe Durant, Billy Andrade, Tommy Armour III, Todd Hamilton, Sutherland, and Paul Goydos) were all under par. That’s not mismanagement, it’s malpractice.

For 2 hours and 55 minutes I was treated to 19, that’s right NINETEEN old guys playing golf while watching an almost equal amount of “crap” in the form of features, interviews, promos, and statistical full screen graphics. In the last five minutes a flurry of players, close to the lead (Fred Funk, Andrade, and Goydos), got air time in the form of one golf shot. That brought the grand total of different players shown to 23 in THREE HOURS! I grabbed a sandwich and a diet coke and returned to my perch to watch “Golf Central LIVE from the Waste Management Phoenix Open.” It proved interesting, and actually a little sad, that the all golf network showed almost as many guys play golf during its news show than it did in the three hours of tournament coverage that preceded it.

Finally, it was time for the PGA TOUR with Tommy Roy at the helm. True to form and fashion we saw a lot of Phil (you can read my earlier post about why this bugs me) and Rickie Fowler but in the first hour we saw 12 other guys. In the next five minutes we got a look at four more bringing Tommy’s total to 18 in 65 minutes. One shy of the total shown in the previous tournament coverage’s one hundred and seventy-five minutes. Long before the two-hour mark of the Phoenix show, Roy matched the 23 number thanks to a shot of Camilo Villegas, and then blasted through that barrier by showing Charles Howell III, Tyrone Van Aswegen, Kevin Na, Harris English, Chad Campbell, Robert Streb, Tony Finau, and Ryan Palmer. It didn’t matter their score in relation to par or how close they were to the lead, they were golfers, hitting golf shots and a good producer made the time to show them. Sure he had the PGA TOUR and the spectacle of the par three 16th hole in his pocket but given the same set of circumstances the person producing the Champions Tour (oops I did it again), wouldn’t have been, apparently isn’t capable of being, so generous. In all Roy showed 31 different players, not 50 or 60 but not bad. Next up the LPGA tour.

I love the LPGA Tour and, full disclosure, personally like a number of the people responsible for this broadcast (some of them a lot) but I’m sorry to report that the fans who wanted to watch the outstanding players on this tour were the most frustrated and least served. Right off the bat we saw Kim Kaufman, Haru Noruma, Ha Na Jang and Lydia Ko hit shots before the first commercial. Over the next 20 minutes we watched 7 more including Michelle Wie, Suzann Petersen and Brooke Henderson. Eleven different players in half an hour of television. Another half an hour later we had only seen an additional four hit shots (and Carlotta Ciganda only got on TV because she chipped in… not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Were you watching? Any idea who was grouped with Pettersen? Yeah, me neither. Did you get a chance to see who was playing alongside Michelle Wie, Lizette Salas or Gerina Piller? No you didn’t because somebody made the conscious choice to not show those players. My friends, and for that matter my non-friends, on that tour might argue that there were weather delays and coverage of the leaders had to start at the very first hole. Sorry, not good enough. When the taping started every player that made the cut was on the golf course. Cameras were “with” Petersen, Wie, Piller and others but as far as we at home knew they were playing by themselves. Another argument that I would make for showing more players is that it was a foregone conclusion that there would be no conclusion to the round during the time Golf Channel was on the air so why not show every single player you could? At the end of the two-hour telecast we had only seen 15 different people hit at least one shot.

So that was my day. My takeaway is that I still like watching live golf but am enjoying it less and less on Golf Channel. One thing that would make it a more enjoyable viewing experience for me is a concerted effort by Tommy Roy, one of the best in the business, to demand better of the people over whom he presides. Demand more. Tell his charges to show more golf, teach them how. He does it, I did it, find out if they can do it. It must be important to Tommy because he makes a point of bringing the philosophy of More Golf to his broadcasts. Why should it be less important to the other folks who produce golf on his network? Bottom line is it would, in my view, be a better product and who wouldn’t want that?

Posted in Golf, golf on tv, sports | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Five Things I’d Tweet If I Was Still On Twitter

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

I wish I was part of the team that wrote You, Me and the Apocalypse. Kudos to those who did

That was an inauspicious debut for David Feherty on GC/NBC golf today

Hard to believe Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are the most diverse and best candidates one party has to offer

I reiterate my position that there should have been a moratorium on all things Presidential Campaign until Jan 1 of an election year

Nobody would teach Lexi Thompson’s golf swing… Or Lee Trevino’s, Arnold Palmer’s or Nancy Lopez’s

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Five Things I Would Do Differently If I Was in Charge of LPGA TV Broadcasts

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

We are a few days into another LPGA Tour season. As a golf fan I am very much looking forward to what this new year might bring… Will there actually be a rivalry between Lydia Ko and InBee Park? Will Michelle Wie come back happy and healthy? How many events into 2016 will it take Stacey Lewis to win again?  How exciting will the West Coast Majors be at Sahalee and CordeValle? Those are just a few of the questions on my mind. Most of these will be played out on television screens thanks to the production team at the Golf Channel and if the past is any prelude to the present my expectations are that the coverage provided by the all golf network won’t look any different than its coverage over the past few years… so far that has proven to be true and that’s a shame. I sat in the producer’s chair for LPGA events for decades and if I were in that chair heading in to 2016 here are a few of the things I would propose to make the coverage more compelling.

 

Give Thursday and Friday back to the players – Once upon a time the LPGA Tour, by virtue of professional, personal preference or names being randomly spit out of a computer in Daytona Beach, put groupings of competitors together for the first two rounds of a 72-hole golf tournament. Somewhere along the way, after I arrived on the scene in 1990, television producers began taking responsibility for who played with whom on Thursday and Friday. Our process was simple, I merely asked Barb Trammell, Janet Lindsay, Jim Haley or the tour official responsible for groupings if Beth Daniel, Dottie Pepper, Nancy Lopez, Betsy King, Patty Sheehan, Meg Mallon and later Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb and Lorena Ochoa could somehow, someway wind up playing together in subsequent groups right in the middle of our broadcast window. Amazingly they did!

We all thought it was a great idea because viewers would be treated to seeing the best players in the game play together for the first two rounds of an event. As a producer it made my life easier because I always had a “bail”; a recognizable, name player I could show regardless of her score at the time. What I realize now, as a viewer, is what it actually creates is a “Champions Tour” viewing experience on the much more interesting, far more diverse, LPGA Tour. What I mean by that is we end up seeing the same players featured on almost every single broadcast because Inbee Park, Lydia Ko, Michelle Wie, Stacey Lewis, Cristie Kerr and Lexi Thompson (the players the current Golf Channel producer requests for the TV window on Thursday and Friday) are almost always in the mix on Saturday and Sunday when TV shows the leaders.

Here’s my simple suggestion for a change in 2016… Butt Out! Give control of the early round groupings back to the Tour. I would add that maybe TV folks could consult with Tour folks about a system that might include a telegenic, exciting, rookie or a particularly compelling sponsor’s exemption or a group that includes players that finished in the top ten the week before as part of the mix but give the power of picking the groupings back to the people at LPGA HQ. Let the computer spit out the names and the groupings and then manufacture a broadcast around what you get, not what you want.

 

Jettison the in-booth “hole” announcer – Nobody benefits from another announcer on the broadcast, particularly one who is assigned holes from which he or she isn’t actually broadcasting. Instead get a player, ideally one who just finished her round, and station her on the tee box of a back nine hole to give viewers information, insight, and a more than occasional interview. Most times there is a hole that during a tournament generates a back up (a difficult par 3 or a reachable par 5) and when that happens competitors are available to talk. In my experience other than the guys on the Web.com Tour the pros on the LPGA are the most engaging and cooperative in sports. It’s a win-win for viewers. We stop having to listen to extraneous babble from the booth and get to see one player, each day, in an outside the ropes environment and still get to hear potentially valuable insight from her and her fellow competitors. There will be times when players refuse or tee times and broadcast windows make this impossible but it’s still a win for the viewer because the extra announcer is gone. By the way this does not mean Terry Gannon gets to talk more!

Give us a “Facts and Figures” Friday – I have long written and lamented that golf broadcasts lag behind other sports telecasts in USEFUL statistical information. For the most part the Golf Channel has smart people in charge of their graphics operations on site so why not put them to work doing something more than “for birdie”, “for par” and regurgitating twitter handles. Every Friday the broadcast could concentrate on one fact or statistic and make that a theme throughout. On week it could be total yards driving the golf ball, another could be feet in putts attempted and a third could be number of times each club in the bag was used. To make things more manageable you would keep this information contained among the six or nine players in two or three featured groupings. There are dozens of informational tidbits that could be incorporated including A SHOT CLOCK! Wouldn’t that be cool? During live shots put a clock on each competitor to document exactly how long it takes for players in the broadcast window to pull the trigger. Is that time consistent or does it change when players have to hit a certain shot, putt for birdie or double bogey, and are, or aren’t, in contention? Are certain players consistent clock offenders or do situations actually determine time management? I think this would be fascinating and if it’s controversial, all the better.

Hire college students who fluently speak appropriate foreign languages – There are few things better on a broadcast than listening to player/caddy conversation concerning strategy or conditions. Golf Channel, thanks to Jerry Foltz and Karen Stupples, does a decent job in letting us hear a good deal of it. The network could, in my opinion, always do more. A dilemma arises when the player and caddie are speaking a language that isn’t English. So instead of listening to a Korean speaking player speak Korean or a Norwegian go on and on in Norwegian we get to listen to Gannon or Judy Rankin or Tom Abbott talk over them and say something stupid like, “I have to brush up on my Korean,” or “I believe they like the 7 iron instead of the 8 iron ha ha” Again my idea is an improvement and it’s simple! Most LPGA Tour stops are somewhere near institutions of higher learning containing students who are fluent or well on their way to becoming fluent in several foreign languages, including Korean, Spanish, Japanese and Norwegian. Put a headset on some of those students and get them on the broadcast, then we’ll know exactly what Suzann Peterson, Azahara Munoz and Ai Myazato are saying. The producer will know on Wednesday which languages will be needed and if some preliminary legwork has been done a week or two in advance the student could be available for the broadcast.

Last but not least – The LPGA needs to enlist another broadcast partner – Competition makes everybody better and right now there isn’t any when it comes to putting the LPGA on TV. The Golf Channel can give us whatever product they want because, except for an event here or there, they are the only game in town. We don’t get a vote and our only form of protest is to not watch. But we LIKE the LPGA and we don’t WANT to turn it off.

I don’t know if any of these ideas would enhance your LPGA viewing pleasure but I’d love to see the powers that be try any or all of them. It sure would

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Five Things I’d Tweet If I Was Still On Twitter

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

Is there any sport MORE predictable than women’s college hoops?

I really like CBS golf’s new tee shot Trackman graphics. Brings back memories of our JUGGS gun experiment

“Order in the court Bucci, Justise is served!” ESPN should send that promo to the bench. It’s tired

Who thinks two weeks is too long to wait for the Super Bowl.

Just finished book #2! Now the real writing work begins… It’s called rewriting.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I’ve had my Fill of Phil

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

I have opined about Philip Alfred Mickelson on this site before and my hope is you didn’t mind because I am going to do it again.

Flipping back and forth between sports events on TV Saturday I returned now and again to the Golf Channel. Each time, much to my growing dismay, I was force fed every single shot struck by Phil Mickelson. With every glimpse of the black clad lefthander my mind called up the same two thoughts… Why? And “What better way to attract millennials to the game than by showcasing the 45 and a half year old spokesperson for a rheumatoid arthritis drug? I realize more than 1.3 million Americans suffer from this debilitating disease and I, in no way, wish to cast aspersions on any of them so let’s concentrate on the WHY?  

“Because he’s PHIL!”

“Because PHIL is one of the greatest!.”

I know he is and I don’t think he is.

Before I go on let me say without a single doubt in my mind that Phil Mickelson is a very, very, very, very, ok one more, very good player. In fact in his prime he had few, if any, peers as a pitcher and chipper of the golf ball but that alone doesn’t elevate his game to the level of one of the greatest of all time. When I say that I mean he isn’t in my top 20. I know, I know, he’s won 42 times on the PGA TOUR (9th all-time) and can claim five major championship victories (more on both of those stats later) but what drops Phil Mickelson out of the top 20 for me is the fact that he has never, ever, been the best in the business or the best of his generation for any single year, or at any time, since he dominated the college and amateur game from 1989-1992.

Granted in the two plus decades since Mickelson turned pro he has done a number of things but what he has NEVER done is:

  1. Ascend to the top of the Official World Golf Rankings
  2. Been the leading money winner during any season on the PGA TOUR
  3. been named PGA TOUR Player of the Year
  4. been awarded the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average

If you give him a pass on all of that because his career ran in the same fast lane as Tiger Woods I give you Martin Kaymer, Lee Westwood, Ernie Els, Luke Donald and Adam Scott. They all achieved OWGR number one status playing at the same time as Tiger. Phil never could.

I also offer up the names of Tom Lehman, David Duval, Vijay Singh (3 times), Matt Kuchar and Luke Donald. All did what Phil Mickelson never did: lead the PGA TOUR in earnings while Tiger Woods was teeing it up as a pro. Need more? How about this; both Mark O’Meara and Padraig Harrington have been Player of the Year on tour during the Tiger Woods era but not Phil Mickelson. In case you’re wondering Tiger won Player of the Year eleven times but this isn’t a Tiger vs Phil discussion, this is a Phil vs Greatness conversation.

Phil also had five years BT (before Tiger) and still couldn’t garner any of those accolades losing out on some or all of those awards to players including Greg Norman, Nick Price, Fred Couples, and Nick Faldo between 1992 and 1996. I am also well aware that Phil Mickelson is in the World Golf Hall of Fame but who among us can argue, with a straight face, that that isn’t the least exclusive club in sports.

Now lets get to those tournament wins. I’m certain you’ll offer up his five major championships as a defense. Not bad, say I, just not good enough.

It took him more than a dozen professional years to win his first (the 2004 Masters Tournament). A year later he won his second major (the PGA Championship) and the very next year another Masters. A nice run but it took him four more years to win another major (his third Masters) and another three years to win his fifth and final one (the 2013 British Open). Five majors in all. Just for illustration there have been 36 players (13 men and 13 women) to win more than five and another eight (5 men, 3 women) tied with Mickelson on that mark. Also three of his major wins were at Augusta, masterfully done indeed, but it is the same golf course year after year and the field is the smallest and least competitive of any major championship.

He also won 2 WGC events (I’m including the 1996 World Series of Golf), 2 TOUR Championships, 1 PGA TOUR playoff event and 1 The PLAYERS. By my count that’s 11 rather impressive titles. If you want you can trumpet his one win at Bay Hill but even just a cursory look at the rest of his wins gives you a resume riddled with Greater Hartford Opens, BellSouth Classics and A T and T Pebble Beach Pro-Ams. All respectable victories but, in my mind, hardly the stuff of greatness.

So go ahead, TV guys, and keep bringing Phil Mickelson into my living room but how about you start showing him on tape, when he holes a shot from the fairway, dunks one from a greenside bunker, chips in from just off the green or legitimately has a chance to win. Just stop with the every shot, every step, every smile, every tip of the KPMG cap, coverage. I realize to many this is heresy, “my god man this is Phil Mickelson you’re talking about” but he’s well past his “sell by” date and there are younger, better, more appealing, people playing at the same time, in the same event. Oh and many of them have a better score and a better chance of winning. Please stop forcing Phil Mickelson on us, wouldn’t that be great!?

 

Posted in Golf, golf on tv, sports | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Five Things I’d Tweet if I Was Still on Twitter

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

After watching 29 minutes and 19 seconds of this crappy NFC Championship game I say Denver beats either of these teams in Super Bowl 50

top ten annoying commercial on TV… Dr. Pepper and Lil Sweet

Happy for Jason Gore’s top twenty on the PGA TOUR this week

Top ten annoying commercial on TV… Geico weightlifter guys. Prime example of clever first time, maddening every time after that

Read at least one book in February

 

Posted in general observations, sports | Leave a comment

“A Rose By Any Other Name…

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

With apologies to the Bard…

PGA TOUR Champions?

Who’s bright idea was that rebranding?

More than 20 percent of the field at the newly named tour’s first event weren’t ever PGA TOUR champions and that percentage may even rise at a full field event. My question is what the heck was wrong with the Champions Tour? Heck what was wrong with the simpler and more appropriate Senior Tour?

The over fifty exhibition golf circuit came into existence in 1980 and was correctly called the Senior PGA TOUR for 22 years. Then in 2002 during an annual “state of the tours” address PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem announced, and I’m paraphrasing here, that “champions” was good and “seniors” was not. Here was the commish’s quote…

‘The bigger question here was in terms of extending the strength of the PGA Tour brand in a relevant way to reach the broader fan. We felt ‘champions’ resonated better than ‘seniors’.” He also said the change from Senior PGA Tour to Champions Tour was not solely because of negative connotations to the word ”senior.”

Not solely but mostly (my words, not his) and the “seniors” who played on the tour at the time agreed.

”I see myself as a champion, and I think this new tour name will broaden the definition of that word,” said Hale Irwin, who, while still playing on the tour at the age of almost 71, wasn’t asked to comment on the latest moniker makeover.

So some “branding expert” wandering the halls of PGA TOUR HQ decided that the word “senior” sounded bad or old or uncool. Even though it was A-OK with Palmer, Trevino, Floyd, Rodriguez, Nicklaus and others. I guess they guessed “Champions” was better, hipper, badassier. What they didn’t calculate was that nobody really cared, many still called it the Senior Tour, amazingly enough some still do

Now this, in the dark of night, in “Irsayian” fashion, under the cover of a new year’s hangover, and golf’s latest phenom destroying both the field and par at Kapalua, they’ve changed the name again this time to The PGA TOUR Champions. I’m sure those same folks in Ponte Vedra think this even further connects the older guys to their younger, longer hitting, counterparts but it really doesn’t. An article in a national newspaper about the first event of 2016 still referred to it as “the Senior Tour” almost two decades after they officially stopped calling it that. By the way did anybody ever think the Senior Tour was NOT affiliated with the PGA TOUR in the first place?

Not to mention “NBC on Golf Channel proudly presents the PGA TOUR Champions” is so much more laden and phlegmatic for Bob Papa, Whit Watson, David Marr or anybody else to say. As well as harder to comprehend and ill defined for those of us “seniors” in the audience. And finally, as stated above, they aren’t all “PGA TOUR Champions”.

What’s next, letting them wear shorts?

Posted in general observations, Golf, golf on tv, sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five Things I’d Tweet if I Was Still on Twitter

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

what does Colt Knost have to do to get on a Golf Channel broadcast?

I actually enjoy Mark Wahlberg movies… Except the Ted ones

buying Vinyl is very satisfying

i downloaded 7 Glenn Frey songs last night

27 days until pitchers and catchers report

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Long and Short of it

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

The latest “Thank goodness THIS is finally being addressed” problem rearing it’s head around the golf world actually has more to do with players’ tails. More specifically what and how much fabric is covering them.

it looks like the European Tour is giving the thumbs up to allowing professionals to wear shorts during practice rounds AND pro-ams. Just in case you’re new to this whole pro golf thing and don’t know what a pro-am is they are the days during the tournament week in which amateur golfers like you, me and corporate CEOs pony up boatloads of money to play golf with, and largely get ignored by, Tour professionals.

Sartorial standard bearer Ian Poulter is all for it and now so is, not so much sartorial standard bearer and current world number one, Jordan Spieth. Playing in Abu Dhabi instead of the California desert this week the newest next Tiger Woods said of wearing shorts, “I think it’s awesome, it will be something that I would love to see on the PGA Tour, as well. I’ve not heard one person complain about it.” (The quote comes thanks to the reporting of Alistair Tait).

Well then Jordan allow me to be the first to complain. Remember me? I’m the card carrying member of the “get off my lawn” club and I say keep your legs to yourself. Believe it or not I thought about this in September of 2014 while watching professional tennis players in collarless shirts. I wondered what happened to decorum and good taste? Then I asked a few friends, professional golfers and professional golfers who are friends if they were a “yay” or a “nay” on professional golfers sporting short pants.

i asked 13 guys (I know not a huge sample size) and 7 gave me an unequivocal YES, including Jerry Foltz, Colt Knost and Dave Stockton Jr. An eighth said yes but added “reluctantly” and a ninth said yes but if he were in charge “he wouldn’t let them do it”. Three others said no and one said “Hell No!” If you’re counting at home that’s 9-4 in favor of untanned, hairy, legs on display.

I did the “study” then forgot about it until Poulter and Jordan, among others, made me think about it again. One argument for shorts is, “I’d rather see shorts than guys sweat through their slacks on hot, humid days”. Something tells me guys who sweat through moisture wicking pants are going to sweat through shorts too.

Another argument on the affirmative side is that “the girls and ladies of the LPGA get to wear shorts so why shouldn’t the guys?” To that I say many women wear dresses to their offices everyday and my guess is those dresses are more comfortable than suits and ties but I don’t think men in similar offices should wear dresses to work.

Bottom line for me as a viewer and fan is that this is their job and I think they should maintain an air of professionalism and wear appropriate attire (by that I mean long pants). But by the looks of my, now dated and tiny sample size, poll what I think may soon not matter.

What say you?

 

Posted in general observations, Golf, golf on tv, sports | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

18 Things I’d like to see in golf or on golf TV in 2016

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Keith Hirshland

We are barely more than 3/4 of one tournament in to professional golf for 2016. Watching some of the coverage from the beautiful Plantation Course at Kapalua got me thinking about some things I’d like to see or see happen this year. Since there are 18 holes I chose 18 items. My “19th hole” is a hearty aloha and welcome back to Mark Rolfing.

In no particular order, here’s my list…

No whining in 2016 for Bubba Watson but at least one more victory for Tom Watson

More times in contention for Michelle Wie and Tiger Woods

A win for Stacey Lewis, Brooke Henderson and Laura Davies

A win for Jason Gore, Colt Knost and Jarrod Lyle

Good broadcasts and compelling majors for my friends at CBS, FOX and Golf Channel on NBC

Jordan Spieth wearing something OTHER than gray or white pants

A change in what countries are eligible to participate in the Ryder Cup

A couple of unknown or relatively little known players winning gold medals at the Olympic Games

Fewer (preferably none) LPGA players having to be lined up by their caddies

More Katrek and Maginnes on Sirius XM PGA TOUR radio

Fewer promos, tap ins and stating the obvious on television broadcasts

More Jerry Foltz, Dottie Pepper and Frank Nobilo on television broadcasts.

Good health all year long for Jason Day

David Feherty finding his funny bone and a “foil” on Golf Channel on NBC broadcasts

Tours and tournaments foregoing playing 18 over and over and over again for sudden death.

If tours and tournaments are going to continue to play 18 over and over and over at least change the hole location each time

Less attention paid to the Champions Tour and more attention paid to the Web.com Tour

Discussions about incorporating a mixed gender/mixed tour/mixed team event into the schedule

Posted in general observations, Golf, golf on tv, sports | 2 Comments