![]() ![]() At 52 minutes in we saw Ha Na Jang for the first time as she was getting into a golf cart and withdrawing from the event. The first page of the leaderboard never changed. An hour into the telecast, the number of players shown had increased from 9 to 16 but the majority of the focus was on Thompson, Creamer, and Wie. ![]() During the following several segments the strategy came into focus the focus was going to be star power. I was surprised we did not see one single shot of Ha Na Jang. As expected, we were shown Ryu, Creamer, Thompson, Lee, Nordqvist as well as Michelle Wie, Juli Inkster, Ai Miyazato and Moriya Jutanagarn. All in all, as a friend of mine in the UK, would say (if I had a friend in the UK), a “boffo” segment. During the next 12 minutes of live golf coverage, I saw 9 players hit a total of 15 golf shots, interrupted by or going to commercial with 1 minute of full screen leaderboards. It began with one highlight of Ryu’s great round (remember it happened early and to get more highlights would have been a drain on both resources and budget). The telecast hit the ground running at 6:00 PM ET straight up and, after a short intro, got to the golf. I was curious to see which approach was chosen. The “featured groups” that day (the ones assigned an on course announcer) included Lexi Thompson, Anna Nordqvist, Ha Na Jang, Paula Creamer and Minjee Lee. Show the stars, arranged in threesomes, and stay with them scores be damned, use the never changing leaderboard as an opportunity to stretch the envelope and show as many players as possible or hope somebody makes a charge from out of the pack and deploy resources to cover that round. Putting on my producer hat I figured there were three choices for a plan. That leaderboard wasn’t likely to change and if it did it would be by one name, two at best. A full-screen leaderboard featured eight players per page and all eight that day, playing a very difficult golf course, were 4 under par or better and finished. The LPGA came on the air at 3 PM PT with So Yeon Ryu in the house with an amazing 9 under par 63. That’s the situation that faced the producer on Thursday of the Swinging Skirts. One of your worst nightmares is the perfect storm of a late afternoon airtime, half the field in the house (including the leaders) and the first page of a leaderboard that likely won’t change the entire time you are on the air. As a producer, you know some of the players that will be featured in your coverage because you’ve had a hand in determining the groupings but there is no guarantee those hand-picked players will play well. There is no story yet and everybody is starting from scratch. ![]() Thursday is almost always the hardest day. He or she certainly has help in making those decisions but the final call ultimately falls on their shoulders. The best ones go with the flow, the worst stick to a script. ![]() The person producing a golf tournament on TV makes hundreds of decisions during a broadcast, not the least of which include who to show, when to show them, whether to show them live or on tape, when to interrupt action for a leaderboard, a promo, or a feature and when to leave the action for good to go to commercial break. On Thursday and Friday, (again except on the Senior… I mean, Champions… oops, PGA Tour Champions) play lasts all day so depending on the air times you can have half the field already finished, half the field not having started, or somewhere in between. There are no built in, scheduled TV timeouts (play doesn’t stop while the commercials are airing) and EVERYBODY is playing offense. Instead of one playing field, there are 18. In golf, the producer has to pick and choose which ball to show. That’s not to say those sports are easy, it’s just to say they are easier than golf. How and where it goes is, pretty much, how the story goes. The basic story of most stick and ball sports can be told by simply pointing the camera at the ball. The Web.com Tour (again based on the four criteria listed) is, without question in my mind, the most difficult. Using familiarity of the field, the predictability of the outcome, resources and how meaningful the result is, as criteria I would say a Champions Tour (excuse me the PGA TOUR Champions) event is by far the easiest to produce, then the PGA TOUR and then the LPGA Tour. Doing it well might be the toughest job in sports television. Producing a golf tournament broadcast can be a daunting task. ![]()
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