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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Rich View Post
    I noticed a segment when, as a player approached the first tee (can't remember who), Joe Buck announced that the golfer had never won a PGA tournament, but has been in two playoffs, right when the graphic under the golfer's name read "Won two PGA tournaments." Typical Fox coverage.
    The fact that Joe Buck not only has a job in broadcasting, but is given prime assignments in multiple sports is just one of those things I don't think I'll ever understand no matter how long I live. He's awful.

  2. #22
    Currently leader, Brooks Koepka, is the great nephew of Dick Groat.

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Winston’Salem
    Quote Originally Posted by nmduke2001 View Post
    Currently leader, Brooks Koepka, is the great nephew of Dick Groat.
    Koepka will be your champ. Ran away with it, actually. Those three straight birdies on the back 9 today were the key stretch.
    "Amazing what a minute can do."

  4. #24
    FOX, of course, had the ex-girl friend's name. Instead of the current girl friend riding in the cart with Koepka after the final hole.
    ~rthomas

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    On a golf forum I go to, I picked Koepka before the tournament began. So now I'm looking pretty smart.

    I enjoyed the tournament immensely. Looks like a gorgeous course. I'd love to play it, but certainly not from those tees, lol.
    "We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    St. Louis
    Quote Originally Posted by Rich View Post
    I noticed a segment when, as a player approached the first tee (can't remember who), Joe Buck announced that the golfer had never won a PGA tournament, but has been in two playoffs, right when the graphic under the golfer's name read "Won two PGA tournaments." Typical Fox coverage.
    I'd say that the coverage described above was "fair and balanced."

  7. #27
    IMO, the game needs a few great stars frequently competing for the majors. I doubt 7 different winners for the last 7 majors helps ratings.

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by kmspeaks View Post
    The fact that Joe Buck not only has a job in broadcasting, but is given prime assignments in multiple sports is just one of those things I don't think I'll ever understand no matter how long I live. He's awful.
    Totally agree with you. I find Joe Buck unbearable and he's an especially bad announcer for golf. (it would be nice if he, at least, knew the name of the winner's girlfriend!). It's like he is almost a caricature of a sportscaster.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by nmduke2001 View Post
    Currently leader, Brooks Koepka, is the great nephew of Dick Groat.
    Yea, nice to have the (somewhat distant) Duke connection with the winner!

  10. #30
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    Quote Originally Posted by duke79 View Post
    Totally agree with you. I find Joe Buck unbearable and he's an especially bad announcer for golf. (it would be nice if he, at least, knew the name of the winner's girlfriend!). It's like he is almost a caricature of a sportscaster.
    He's much better as a baseball announcer than as a golf announcer.

    I remember thinking that Fox's golf coverage was absolutely horrific. And then yesterday I suddenly realized that what they are showing on the TV is not bad at all; in many ways, better than NBCs. The reason it seems horrible is Joe Buck. Fox absolutely needs to get him away from announcing major golf tournaments.
    "We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by rsvman View Post

    I remember thinking that Fox's golf coverage was absolutely horrific. And then yesterday I suddenly realized that what they are showing on the TV is not bad at all; in many ways, better than NBCs. The reason it seems horrible is Joe Buck. Fox absolutely needs to get him away from announcing major golf tournaments.
    IMO, Jim Nantz is the best golf announcer and CBS has the best coverage. I wish CBS had all the majors.

  12. #32
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Northwest NC
    Quote Originally Posted by Jeffrey View Post
    IMO, Jim Nantz is the best golf announcer and CBS has the best coverage. I wish CBS had all the majors.
    I agree. CBS doesn't have all the fancy shmancy gizmos the other networks have and are better off because of it. I don't need to see an orange tracer line every single time a player hits a shot. Show it on a replay if it's a good shot, fine but every single time is ridiculous.

    And yes, Joe Buck as a golf commentator is a joke. I actually like Curtis Strange and Paul Azinger which for me at least made yesterday bearable.
    "The future ain't what it used to be."

  13. #33
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North of Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by Jeffrey View Post
    IMO, Jim Nantz is the best golf announcer and CBS has the best coverage. I wish CBS had all the majors.
    I agree that Nantz and CBS are the best. I wish all the networks played by the Masters rules for majors of understated dignity and elegance (I love the minimal commercials but I recognize that that is a rule that cannot become universal). NBC was not as good as CBS but it was fine. Announcers shouldn't take themselves too seriously, but they should respect the game. Fox is toning down its act a lot from baseball and football, but it is still too much for me. But as someone beyond the 18-34 demographic, I don't know if they really care about my opinion.

    I agree with others that the ball tracker isn't necessary on every shot, but it was helpful in educating my young son about golf - used periodically, it is a good feature.

  14. #34
    My wife asked me what Holly Sonders brings to golf coverage.

    DCdN8DhXoAMCUQM.jpg
    ~rthomas

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by rthomas View Post
    My wife asked me what Holly Sonders brings to golf coverage.
    My wife already knows my answer!

  16. #36

    Post-tourney thoughts...

    1. Yes, Joe Buck is not good at golf announcing. In this day and age, it's not enough to have a voice that everyone knows to be a crossover play-by-play success like you're Al Michaels or something. You need to have a great depth of knowledge about the sport you're announcing, either from previously playing it at a pretty high level, like Jim Nantz, or just following it closely year-round, like Mike Tirico and Dan Hicks. Those guys can feed their color commentators something to talk about. Buck cannot, although I'm sure he plays golf as a pastime.

    2. All that said, I can't fault him for one thing at this tournament, which would be an inability to make the proceedings seem dramatic. Because they weren't, really. It was over the moment Koepka's tee shot found the fairway on 14. Also, while not as drastic as at Chambers Bay a couple years ago, the sheer size of Erin Hills (even if you're playing it a thousand yards shorter than they did this weekend, it's a freaking hike to get around that course; it's just a massive amount of real estate) made it feel somewhat sparsely attended. There weren't huge galleries.

    3. I'm OK with the recent string of first time major winners, because they've all basically been top 20 players when it happened. Consider that of the 7 of them in a row, four of them have been Garcia, DJ, Stenson and Day, all guys who've spent long periods of time in the world's top 5. These guys are not Todd Hamilton and Stewart Cink and Rich Beem here (no offense to them). Willett does strike me as a bit of a fluke, I guess, but a number of these guys in the current run were in lots of "best to never win a major" discussions before breaking through.

    4. I think the USGA perhaps overcompensated on the "don't court any controversy, just this one year" front after last year's rulings fiasco and the prior year's course conditions drama. Since the controversy usually comes in the form of endless moaning about unfair course difficulty and bloodletting, they set it up to get a solidly negative score winner, but just overdid it a bit. You cut the average fairway 10-15 yards narrower than they did at Erin Hills and let the second cut between that and the fescue grow a bit and it's the usual grind out there, even with the perfect storm of pre-tournament softening rain followed by benign playing conditions.

    5. That said, while it's truly amazing how these guys can overpower a course that plays 50 yards further on every hole than the tips at most of the courses we play at, it's also easy to make too much of scores relative to par here. A lot of PGA setups are 7,200 or so yards these days and played at par 70. Here, a couple of the par 5's were just so long they couldn't be "converted" to par 4's for the pros. As a result, you see a lot more birdies because making 4 on a 600 yard par 5 (which even for the shorter hitters on tour is driver, hybrid, sand wedge to 7 feet) is a heckuva lot easier than making a 3 on a 520 yard par 4.

    6. After his performance at the Ryder Cup, Koepka winning this didn't surprise me in the least.

    7. I'm alright with some level of the parity we're seeing right now, though I think the game will be better off if a little bit of a pecking order is established over the next year or two. Some combination of Spieth/McIlroy/Johnson winning a couple of the next half dozen majors would probably be a good thing. The only remaining player out there without one who could really use the boost to become a bigger star long term is Fowler.

    8. Agree with others on the ball tracer thing. I think part of the problem is the camerawork, though. When they weren't using it, I found it really difficult to follow the flight of the ball out there. Maybe that was a result of the course style, because I often feel like I have the same difficulty watching the British Open. But just a static camera with no zoom to follow the ball does not do it unless you're watching on a 50+ inch screen.

  17. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Mal View Post
    I'm alright with some level of the parity we're seeing right now, though I think the game will be better off if a little bit of a pecking order is established over the next year or two. Some combination of Spieth/McIlroy/Johnson winning a couple of the next half dozen majors would probably be a good thing. The only remaining player out there without one who could really use the boost to become a bigger star long term is Fowler.
    This is what I'm saying. I think a few great stars frequently competing for the majors would better for the game, than the next 7 majors being won by 7 different first-time major winners. I think rivalries and fan favorites help ratings.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Jeffrey View Post
    This is what I'm saying. I think a few great stars frequently competing for the majors would better for the game, than the next 7 majors being won by 7 different first-time major winners. I think rivalries and fan favorites help ratings.
    I think we may differ in our tolerances/perspective, however. Your earlier post seemed to sound like you were already concerned with the last 7 being all different players, as a damper on popularity. I'm OK with it for the time being, but think if that trend pushed out to 3 or 4 years without a repeat it could leave the game a little driftless.

    We may feel differently about where the quality and parity sits, or how we value that parity; I'm not sure. I feel like at the moment there's an abnormally large group of guys with serious game, playing better than we've ever seen before - probably as a result of Tiger Woods making the game as cool as it was when current 18-30 year-olds were growing up and choosing sports. Think of the young guys out there who haven't yet broken through - Rickie Fowler, Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Thomas Pieters, Patrick Reed - but wouldn't surprise anyone if they did. That they'd have to crack the major champions list by beating out a bunch of the guys who collectively overcame the stranglehold Woods had on the game for so long (by basically co-opting his style and taking it to another, younger, even more powerful level) would make them doing so even more impressive. I generally think that's a good thing, and think the overall quality of players is enough to overcome the lack of 2 or 3 players who clearly stand out above the rest.

    In other words, if the bulk of the parity were at a mediocre level, I'd be more concerned. But it's not. It's a high level of parity at a really high level of golf, IMHO.

    All that said, I'd put the odds on the group of Dustin Johnson, McIlroy, Day, Spieth, and I suppose you can throw Koepka in there since he's young and has the upward trend, collectively winning 2 majors before the end of '18 as pretty high. That wouldn't get us completely to your preferred position, with one tier clearly standing a little above the rest, but it'd probably feel a lot closer to that. [I'm leaving out Stenson, Garcia, Rose and the like, as even if they were to win another, they're all "old" enough that it feels like they're not going to be in a longterm rivalry with Rory or Jordan.]

  19. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Mal View Post
    I think we may differ in our tolerances/perspective, however. Your earlier post seemed to sound like you were already concerned with the last 7 being all different players, as a damper on popularity. I'm OK with it for the time being, but think if that trend pushed out to 3 or 4 years without a repeat it could leave the game a little driftless.
    Yes, I think a few great stars frequently competing for the majors would better for the game, than the next 7 majors being won by 7 different first-time major winners. I think rivalries and fan favorites help ratings. When was the last time we had a few great stars frequently competing for the majors?

  20. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by duke79 View Post
    I find Joe Buck unbearable and he's an especially bad announcer for golf. (it would be nice if he, at least, knew the name of the winner's girlfriend!). It's like he is almost a caricature of a sportscaster.
    In addition to his shortcomings as an announcer Joe Buck is a pompous jerk

    “We got it right before we got off the air, but that’s not the world we live in, these days, you have to do the apology tour for getting the week-old girlfriend wrong, so, sorry world.” ...

    “The only person I feel bad for in the whole situation is his ex-girlfriend,” Buck said. “I don’t know her name, I don’t know the name of the current girlfriend — the week-old girlfriend — and I probably won’t know going forward, but good for him.”


    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.14df4cf3bd9c

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