Running 2021 Golf Thread

Atlantic City CC is quite good, too.

 

Television made the PGA change. Televising match play was next to impossible before more portable cameras were created. What little TV golf there was in the 1950s was coverage of the last four holes, sometimes the last three. If a match ended 5 and 4, it wasn't on TV. The USGA switched the U.S. Amateur to stroke play from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s for the same reason, until ABC was able to cable the entire course and cameras, moved from hole to hole on forklifts, didn't take a half-hour to warm up after connection.

 

So humid this morning that I had nearly sweat through my glove through the first hole. Second hole, could not get the grip on my driver dry, so on my follow through, I lost grip and chucked the sonofabitch 30 yards left into the woods. Amazing height on the driver throw, if I must say so myself. Took me three holes to mentally recover. OK back nine, but I think I'll be getting that driver regripped pronto. It was useless the rest of the day.

 

Sounds like rounds of golf in the Philippines, particularly during rainy season. Sweating through gloves was pretty much the norm. And if the grips were worn slick, forget it.

 

Resetting the thread on professional golf or lack thereof ...

Players who have withdrawn from the Open Championship (some but not all due to COVID protocols): Bubba Watson, Hideki Mutsuyama, Matthew Wolff, Danny Lee, K.H. Lee (wife giving birth), Kevin Na, Si Woo Kim (back), Sungjae Im.

Also, NBC has sent on-course reporters but rest of announcers will work out of Connecticut studios.

 

So ... are they sending David Feherty across the pond closer to his homeland or is he now considered a studio sort?

 

Apparently, Feherty stays in Hartford. Curious decision.

NBC to handle most of its Open Championship TV coverage remotely due to travel restrictions

 

I can't see anyone going who can handle the coverage remotely. Sounds like Japan is going to be similar to our friends: If you can do it from home, stay there.

What the networks like and don't have to tell viewers: Easier to take worldwide feeds and not take our people onsite. And, given the amount of money NBC continues to claim it has lost covering the Olympics, all the more reason to stem the financial tide.

 

I'd like to know if scaling back was his call, or did something clinical make the call for him?

I ask because the impression he gave us over the years was that by staying busy, it kept him in a good mental frame of mind and basically helped keep him out of trouble. What changed? And why, aside from some production costs, would Golf Channel cancel a program like "Feherty"?