Golf TV Coverage must improve!!! - suggestions HERE ** including some sweet drone footage **

[Ferguson]

 

Good, traditional coverage.

 

 

 

 

[3jacker]

I wish they'd take away the books. It's a sport. Depth perception and judgment should play into it.

If you can't read a green without consulting a reference guide, you don't belong out there.

[DavePelz4]

You must be really young if your early memories were back 9 coverage. I remember when we only saw holes 16, 17 and 18 of the Masters in black/white. On occasion, the tournament was all over by the time the final group came through. In those days, I was the remote control as my Dad would bark, "Put on the White Sox or put on golf" and I would get up and change the channel for him.

And I'm OK if you walk on my lawn, just pick up your dog's doody, OK?

[Fyll]

Bring on the drones

[FairwaysToHeaven]

LOL where to start. guess i won't use 'we' anymore . hate to speak ferg. point being, and i think you know it, is i'm not the only one to mention at some point in multiple threads these issues. anyhow...

nearly unwatchable...means as a golf addict i'm finding watching golf on tv less and less enjoyable. thats it.

yes, i get that covering golf is a logistics nightmare....whats your point. this has nothing to do with the fact the cameraman feels the need to zoom in on every putt. and whats wrong with fresh perspectives? beats a blimp view or a tower cam.

 

Heres the summary of every days coverage on a loop for 6 hours...with a mix of fedex standings, commercials, and sea otters. You'll never convince me the the networks or the tour can't do better because of logistics or cost.

 

[Hawkeye77]

It’s televised golf not a photo art gallery.

 

[freowho]

More course management analysis. 80% of birdies have come from the left hand side of the fairway. 70% of putts on this hole have been made from below the hole. etc. Most telecasts show how far players hit it and you would think this is all that matters.

[Ferguson]

 

 

[freowho]

Are you being self deprecating?

[PuttChipDrive]

86 wide angle lenses that make the player and the target seem so far away. For example, from tee shots, use regular lens (not an expert with proper terms of course) with massive zoom capability. Once ball is struck, zoom and follow line of shot and show it landing, bouncing, rolling out in relation to how we would watch it in real life from the tee. It's what every YouTube-like course vlog does (because of lack of resources) but it works - it's the only footage I regularly see that makes you feel like you're there and you can relate to what just happened.

[Ferguson]

 

Indeed, from a sense of humor point of view. It's part of what drives my EQ. Got to have it when you manage people.

[DatSliceDoe]

Drones are loud and annoying. Also, kill the green reading lines. Spoils the fun.

[BostonWRX]

I dont think the technology is there yet for TVs but would be cool if you could do multiple screens on your TV. Not picture in picture

1 main screen on your tv with the Broadcast and then if you wanted to follow a certain group/player you could have a smaller screen/a few screens in the corners etc. Like if you wanted to see every shot from Kevin NA during the round for example.

Could help the PGA expand more into fantasy golf and gambling. I am in season long pools where you pick 1 player per week. I would put him up on the small screen during each tournament.

[bscinstnct]

 

So, this is actaully a good idea and it seems we are seeing things move this way. We have "featured groups" online that you can watch on another screen, not the same as on the same screen, but the tech will catch up. I guess it would be limited to the cost/profitability of how many cameras it's worth having following however many players.

 

I imagine that we could one day see the "main coverage" and then 2 more "screens" you can move around your TV into the "biggest screen" depending on what you want to see. The other screens would be the most popular player groups.

[Vardon Grip]

1) Eliminate the play thru commercial PIP!!!!

2) I'm with whomever said show more detail on course contour from tee to fairway and the green complexes. Everything looks pretty flat from the tower views.

3) Try a silent mode broadcast, just the sounds of the players and the crowd w/o the "expert" chiming in, maybe just for a couple of holes but give people a break.

 

[BostonWRX]

Exactly what I am thinking. More interactive would be very cool.

[cougarthesecond]

Televised golf...easy fix...just do it the way the Masters does it...problem solved. Run all the commercials in a cluster at the top and bottom of each half hour and let the rest flow commercial free.

[ray9898]

As someone who works with commercial drones for a living. What you are implying is an option will not happen. First, a large format drones capable of TV quality shots are loud....very loud. No way you are going to be buzzing it over a players head as they are swinging....ever. Second, the FAA will never approve flying a drone over a crowd of spectators at a flight level needed for decent footage.

 

Finally, I remember how golf used to be portrayed on TV. You got a swing, maybe a shot of the ball against a blue sky and a shot of it landing; all in grainy standard definition on a 19' tube tv. Today's coverage is miles above that and is nothing to complain about.

[DonRSD]

So we all play golf and want these courses to look like WE are playing.

Most of us will never play the courses the pros do....maybe a handful of them, but that's it.

 

The Masters can look so green and bright, yet Honda Classic on TV last week looks "dull" (I was there and it was beautiful).

 

Wouldn't mind a camera or mic being a player at all times so we could HEAR them after a good shot or a bad shot in a clutch situation & what they are saying / their reaction.

Hate then all we get is a ball flying thru the air....show a better angle from maybe behind the player or from the crowd....with the side of the TV showing where the ball is tracking via CGI or whatever.

 

The 1 main thing is raise the surround sound noise. Rarely do we "hear" a thunderous roar or birds in the background. Everything is just front loaded onto a 5.1/7.1/5.1.4/etc system. Would love to hear the crowd like Waste Management and also the crowd yelling things / buzzing.

[ALi3]

Here are my complaints:

I don't want to see a ball flying through the air with no way to see what's happening until it landsTower shots are extremely boring and don't provide enough depth to truly appreciate the courseZooming in on putts takes away the players, caddies, and crowd reactionsWhat I'd love to see more of:

Camera's behind players or just in lower locations. When a player is hitting their second shot on #6 at pebble I want to see that wall of rough they have to climb.Lower angles for putts and chips around the green. I want to see the crazy undulations of the greens.More shots. I can't believe for the amount of time a broadcast is being shown the little amount of golf I'm actually seeing. Taking the time to follow an entire group on a hole. It would be amazing to build an actual narative over the period of a group playing a hole. You can show recorded shots between them moving up or have the announcers speak more. I just want rounds to feel more cohesive. Not just a bunch of shots with no continuity.Angles at ground level when players are hitting into greens.None of this stuff seems difficult to do and would make the viewing experience exponentially better for me.

[Darth Putter]

The "main coverage" of course being Tiger's group....

[tsecor]

Like every other sport, you need really hot women doing the reporting.......that is all

[bscinstnct]

Well, all 3 screens would be Tiger. But with how big the screens are now, you can probably catch a few otehr players in the background here and there ; )

[flyingwedges2]

Less commentary, a lot less. Emulate the BBC coverage of The Open.

No more Joe Buck, no more Jim Nance, or Azinger, or anyone else who is mono-tonal, vocabulary limited, and Woods focused to the point of me wondering when we'll compare what is in a player's front right pocket to what Woods has in his front right pocket..

Stop belittling players because they are smarter than the announcer, and have a different way of swinging, or crafting their specific clubs. Talk about why that works for them. For example, when Baddeley was a Stack & Tilt guy, no one ever talked about the leading edge grinding required on his irons yet without it, he couldn't have ever used S&T

Talk about actual carry distance and how it changes based upon temperature. Stop yacking about how they hit it 320 when 60 yards of it is on the ground

Expand coverage of players, to the entire field

Add a bit of color about what's going on in the player's game that is / isn't causing issues

Talk about how the 7 iron of player X is really 8* strong and 2/3" over standard length meaning the 200 yard 7 iron is actually a 5 iron, etc.

Give info on how the driver setting is configured, closed , open, less loft, more loft, and why.

Even though I mentioned less commentary, that is about the mindless blather that provides no info. Talk about why player X has a certain shaft in his 3 wood, or why they use certain shafts in the irons. Talk about any special grinds on wedges for the week if they are in the desert where it's dry or in Ohio were the ground is mush

[Hawkeye77]

Agree - it’s essential if you want to manage/relate to employees in a productive way.

[golfnz34me]

Here's how I would make golf coverage much more entertaining for ME, and me alone:

All of the volunteers working the course must be attractive females 18-25, and must be wearing bikinis. Kind of like those girls from boxing matches.

Ditto for the caddies, it should work like the old Masters, where the course provides the caddies and they wear a uniform. Except the caddies will be all girls, and the uniform will be a bikini.

Preferably the caddies will be dumb and unable to give an accurate yardage to their player, which will yield HILARIOUS results.

Trained monkeys will be used to tee up all golf balls, and will retrieve golf balls from the hole. This will provide even more entertainment when the tournament is in Florida, as there will be a good chance to see a Monkey get eaten be a gator.

No coverage whatsoever of Tiger Woods. This will provide 2 separate areas of improvement in entertaining value: 1, No longer have to hear announcers constantly blather on about how great he is. 2, Watching the Tiger sycophants head explode on Twitter, Instagram, and golf forums will be glorious to watch.

And last but not least, hire a heckler to walk around the golf course with an air-horn. Then pick out the golfers with the hottest tempers and have him blare the horn in the middle of their backswing. The ensuing temper tantrums will be priceless!

 

There, you think my ideas will be adopted?

 

[nichswinger]

There are laws (Can't be sure on individual states) prohibiting the use of Drones above crowds larger than 500 people. So Jason Kokrak or Andrew Putnam could get all the drone footage they wanted, but anyone with the slightest following, or any holes with grandstands, forget about it.

I want to see full shots, and not even necessarily drives; I would rather get to see every approach shot on tough par 4s and par 5s than see guys hit driver at #6 at Bay hill. The Bailout zone for that tee shot to the right is Enormous. OOH look at the big puddle they hit over.

What would you rather see, a 15 minute sit down with the North American executive commissioner of Honda, or the 1 minute Blurb by the Mercedes or Rolex guy explain how they paid to have the Masters be shown with limited commercial interruption. Which one is more memorable...

In Mexico they proudly announced that they had shown a shot by every player in the field late on Friday. That's a good step, and we need more exposure to more golfers, but as someone has said. Who cares if it's live, give me a hole recap of different tee shots hit in the last 20 minutes at a tough par 3 leading up to a feature group and how they play it. Or a rundown of how different styles of players have approached an exceptionally strategic holes on a course (like 10 at Riv.)

[Stinger83]

Drones. Like I wanna see a guy putting for the win and the drone flies in to pull the flag and then another one zooms in to his face to see how much he's sweating while a tiny beetle drone crawls up to his ball to see how the lie looks

[cradd10]

I would like to see more time spent covering JB Holmes & Bryson Deshamboux read putts.

[Kazfury]

With the popularity of VR headsets, have coverage utilizing VR technology. I think a VR camera setup behind the tee boxes would be great.