Fox Promises A New Era In TV Golf Coverage

 Got home from work last night ready to sit back in my recliner and watch this new network Fox Sports do big time golf for the first time.  Getting off track on this story you know if you are any league college, pro or as low as it goes in amateur sports and in some cases pro sports any time there is a new sports network lookout here comes high dollar money to get something on the screen for their viewers to watch.  So in order to get a quality event Fox gave the USGA gobs of money to steal the major U.S. Championships away from NBC.

All of the leadup promo's told us that their coverage was going to be golf as you have never seen it.  If you remember way back when USFL football came out and I don't even remember what network even did it but they brought out the camera on the wire running all the way across the field.  Every network now uses that camera so even though the league folded some of the TV coverage stuck around.

Quite frankly I didn't see any camera coverage not already in other TV coverage.  I heard they were going to use drones with cameras.  I thought we would see a tee shot and the drone would follow along with the ball until it landed.  Just viewing of a round of golf  Fox didn't give me anything new.  In fact maybe less.  All you saw on the screen as players were proceeding in their rounds were the scores of the top five.  This is the first round of a major and 70 other golfers were on the course and unless they made triple or almost knocked one in you never saw what everyone's score was.  Please I want to know what my favorite player's score is as they travel the course if you are not going to show any of them.

I think their lineup of announcers for the most part was excellent. Joe Buck could do Poker coverage from a telephone booth.  The Shark and  Tom  Weiskopf  are old time color announcers and you wonder where they have been.  When you put eleven hours on the air the second wave of announcers were unknowns and it is hard to trust somebody you never heard before.

I thought the course looked like the British Open.  Brown fairways and even sometime greens.  This is of course the U.S. Open and if they put down holes in a cow pasture and these guys are suppose to be good let's play golf.  It was hard to even think this was a golf course without trees.  The course resembled any home development where strips are homes are built in a row all looking alike just painted different colors without trees.  Please give me some shade.

All the hype Fox gave in the buildup of the coverage they were going to give us I have to give them a D.  Nothing much to Bragg about. I know Tiger has been a great ratings in his heyday.  Watching every shot that Tiger made was like watching  an injured animal not yet dead struggling for life.  I kind of felt sorry for Tiger every bunker, every missed putt.  The fall of Tiger Woods is official.  We all saw it on prime time TV.  Fox gave us every bad shot he hit as if they thought the ratings would sky rocket.  It's time to forget Tiger.  His greatness is over.  The good news for Tiger he plays early today maybe by the time The TV lights come on Tiger will be on a jet heading to Florida.  Then we will see whether Fox can cover golf.  They didn't show me much Thursday.