It’s rubbish!
In fact my 3 out of 10 includes 2 bonus points for the wonderful commentary and anecdotes of Peter Alliss, I have a book of his on the history of The Open, that’s my book jacket on the left but more on that later.
The camerawork is poor, failing to follow balls in the air, frequently having no idea where balls have landed and by way of apology panning across the green / fairway in the hope that somebody may spot it. Well, without an outdoor size mega TV screen with hi def we the viewers have no chance!
This from yesterday’s Mail by way of example …
It’s not great for the BBC – faced with Sky and their superior golf production challenging for Open rights from 2016 – that their cameraman on the second hole missed one of the shots of the tournament as Sergio Garcia holed with his second for an eagle two.
Fifteen minutes later, BBC finally showed a replay from behind of Garcia hitting the ball, but lost sight of its progress to the pin.
The captions or the lack thereof, are rubbish! Frequently wrong, “eagle putt” it says, no it wasn’t, it was for birdie, “4th shot” it says, no it wasn’t etc. etc.
And as for that ridiculous round detail where 18 holes are simply listed left to right without spaces, the player’s scores underneath is not only difficult to read but is shown for such a short space of time to allow any logical analysis impossible.
Fortunately we won’t be needing frequent views of today’s leaderboard to know who’s sitting atop, the current production team seem to think that we are all sat with laptops or tablets zeroed in to The Open website (which we were on Thursday and Friday.)
In today’s world where we the TV viewers are accustomed to first class productions (rugby, cricket, tennis, football, cycling etc.) this performance by the BBC is substantially below par and they should definitely miss the cut if the Mail are correct that broadcast rights are up for review shortly.
My Book
We were on holiday at my wife’s grandfather’s place in the late ’80s, (perhaps The Open was on?) I noticed the book amongst the many on the shelves and started reading it, he very kindly gave it to me.
Published in 1984, it has a chapter dedicated to each year, is full of facts and figures of the events and always by my side when I watch a current Open!
For example.
Gary Player
Earlier in the week, documentaries where aired on the history of The Open, the role of The Royal & Ancient and various other Open golf subjects, one of the more interesting to me was one on Gary Player.
Player of course won The Open in ’59 , ’68 and ’74.
Gary tells us that when walking up the final fairway at Lytham in 1984 with his ball in the middle of the fairway and a five or six shot lead he looked over at Rabbit his caddie and asked if he thought he could win it from here?
Rabbit replied “Ray Charles could win it from here.”
I was also unaware that Gary was the first of the ‘moderns’ to complete the Grand Slam (when he won the US in ’65) Can you hazard a guess at who the first 2 were?
When discussing this in company on perhaps Thursday one of our older mates reminded us of an interview he heard on the then Springbok radio where Gary being interviewed after one of his victories in the States started by saying “I’d like to thank God and General Tyre” (General Tyre were his sponsors at the time!)
That’s enough for now, I’m looking forward to Rory’s later march to victory.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Can’t get coverage here at all. 😦 I follow the scores on the Beeb ‘Live’ website. Akshully it’s rather efficient and I save hours of watching tv.
We do get US coverage of the big golf events a day late with unedited recordings – which means that every few minutes the programme is interrupted for messages from their sponsors, which we don’t see. Instead they show the latest leaderboard and thumbnails of American golfers I’ve never heard of.
Luckily Fowler is as prone to meltdown as McIlroy!
Auntie BEEB was fortunate to have some truly inspired sports presenters over the years – Dan Maskell in tennis, for example, and ‘Johnners’ in cricket to name but two. Peter Alliss is the last of those immortals and it will be a sad day when he hangs up his microphone. I am not even a golfist and care not a jot who wins what, but watch it just to hear his commentaries.
OZ
Two holes in and McIlroy is doing well, still six shots ahead of the pack. Alliss is on form and the only thing spoiling things are the clowns who shout ‘Get in the hole’ whenever a player makes a putt – probably some Septics who’ve escaped across the pond or an indigenous arse who needs a jolly good slapping. It is an inane trend that needs to be stamped out right now and the inbreeds shown the gate to the car park.
OZ
I will never forget Henry Longhurst’s commentary for the BBC the year Tony Jacklin won the British Open. Sayings like “Oh what a corker!” as Jacklin’s drive on the 18th sailed down the fairway. Peter Alliss is a wonderful commentator, telling you all sorts of tit-bits and picking out small details. Very much like he was at your elbow on the course itself. C’mon Rory – lets finish in style.
Sergio is only two back with four to play!
Nail-biting stuff!
Rory’s won it, even though he was the only player in the leading pack to hit over 70. Well done!
OZ
Morning all
A great win for Rory, how about his dad and his mates betting that he’d do it all of 10 years ago?
http://espn.go.com/golf/theopen14/story/_/id/11239690/2014-open-championship-rory-mcilroy-father-wins-bet-son
G’morgen, Soutie!
A great weekend’s sport in fact! Lewis almost recovered from a prang to finish second; England almost confounded the tms critics by worrying India until the last session; Sergio almost threatened Rory with his final round 67!
That’s what sport is about: unpredictability and class performances.
(No mention here of Le Tour where only the two dope suspects, Nibali and Valverde look like winning.)
Môre Jay
.. and SA hammered S/lanka (in S/lanka)
.. and The Sharks sneak through to a semi final showdown with The Crusaders
Rangers beat Sacramento 2-1.
JW, that’s icing on the cake!
It’s such a relief, Soutie, that England have reverted to type and lost ignominiously yet again. At least we still have a half-decent rugby XV.
And in other news, when did a Tour leader ride away from the field in the mountain stages? Oh yes, it was that American cheat. I wonder how Nibali does it? 😦
I fully understand that all winners of Le tour stages (not to mention the actual tour winner) will be questioned by some / most (delete where necessary)
I for one (sort of) accept that the anti-doping people are doing their job and will accept the results as fair, I could of course be wrong.
But your probably right, the sport is perhaps too tainted to ever satisfy the sceptics.
I get the feeling that even the meeja experts are wary of too much excitement. Nobody buys it any more.