By Shane Ryan
Despite the rain, and despite the uneven quality of similar events in the past, Sunday’s second installment of The Match, featuring Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, was an enormous success. The production was top-notch, the golf was dramatic and occasionally brilliant, and the technology served to let the players’ personalities shine through. On top of that, some of the seemingly riskier elements, like turning Justin Thomas into a commentator, blew away the expectations. Oh, and it got the highest rating of any golf event in cable history.

Even before The Match, I had begun thinking about innovations TV broadcasts could make to bolster coverage as we enter new phases of sport and culture and just about everything else. The first two on my list, as you’ll see, were pulled off to perfection on Sunday. The rest are more technical, but I think equally relevant to improving the aesthetic experience of watching golf.

1. Mid-round interviews
There’s no really good reason beyond mild annoyance to the players that this couldn’t work, even in the current COVID-19 environment, provided that safe social distancing is practiced. In the major team sports, coaches are obliged to give interviews, and players will occasionally speak at halftime or between periods. There are no “coaches” in that same sense in golf, but the game happens at a slower pace, and a 60-second walking interview between holes is not too much to ask. I don’t think there’s a reasonable argument that it’s overly disruptive, especially if planned in advance.

The real problem becomes whether the interview is actually GOOD or not. It’s a format that’s prone to flat cliches, but as Sunday proved, this could be a great addition to a broadcast. You just need the right personnel, and that wouldn’t even necessarily mean an on-course reporter—just an earpiece and a connection to the tower. (It also would be wonderful if a player could interact on a longer basis with the announcers via earpieces, as we saw at The Match, but that’s probably asking too much of competitive athletes.)

RELATED: Our six favourite things from The Match II

2. Mic’d up players and caddies
In exhibitions past, we’ve witnessed players with live microphones, but the purpose behind it is dreaded “banter,” which typically comes across as hollow, forced and not very funny. But if players and caddies wore mics during a round, producers could find riveting audio that captures natural conversation or impromptu strategy sessions. Phil serving as a mentor for Tom Brady was riveting and hopefully stokes our appetite for similar mid-round insight. For a sense of what this might look like, check this out from 2018. Twitter was abuzz about a conversation Jordan Spieth and his caddie, Michael Greller, had on the 13th hole, the exchange speaking for itself.

It’s an example of great television that gets to the heart not just of golf strategy, but the player-caddie relationship. Almost 50,000 viewed it that day, based solely on it spreading through Twitter. In that case, seems like the CBS crew had a directional microphone close enough to pick up the dialogue—it wasn’t Spieth and Greller who wore mics—but it gives you a solid idea of the gold that could be mined from capturing audio of these big moments.

3. Racing drone coverage of the shots

First, watch this video:

Incredible golf drone work! ?

Come on @SkySportsGolf – it’s time…
pic.twitter.com/veaVVs3a2o

— thesportsman (@TheSportsman) March 4, 2020

The greatest “absence” in the video coverage of golf shots is that there is a disconnect between where the ball is struck and where the ball lands. You get video of the golfer swinging, and then you get a static shot of where the ball is expected to land. Those shots have the benefit of creating a sense of anticipation, but they’re deficient in pure motion, in seeing how the ball approaches its target. The racing drone videos solve that problem by giving us the complete shot, and with the ball lingering, hovering above the hole below, the sense of anticipation is not lost. In fact, it’s heightened, because you can see the flag from the ball’s perspective.

This, to me, is more than a novelty—it’s an important evolution in capturing the sport. It’s beautiful, too, both in the movement of the ball and the view of the surrounding landscape, and totally immersive. You’d have to manage the coverage without disturbing the players (or inadvertently crashing into a spectator), but when sports like the NFL have actual remote cameras on wires strung over the field, this has to be doable.

Racing drones are priced in the thousands, at their highest, which is a pittance to a major TV network. The training and logistics are the tougher hurdles, but nothing like insurmountable. If CBS or NBC started small and used this technology on a hole or two, I believe the demand would be so great that it would become the new normal.

4. More statistical integration before shots

Icon Sportswire

We have the capacity today to know the exact distance of every shot, and the data to understand how the “average” golfer performs from various positions on the course. “Statistical integration” sounds complex, but I’m speaking simply here. When a player surveys a 12-foot putt, I’d love to know the exact percentage of players who make it from that distance, and the player’s percentage. This happens on occasion, notably during PGA Tour Live streaming broadcasts, but not as much as we’d like.

Likewise, when a player is about to hit a 130-yard approach, I want to know where he stands among his peers in proximity to the pin from that distance. How often are sand saves executed from a specific distance? How often does a drive land in the fairway? ShotLink makes this all possible, and you can find everything online, but it could be used to far greater effect in the actual broadcasts. The announcers wouldn’t have to mention it every time; it could simply be there in a graphic for those of us who want the reference, and it would instantly heighten our appreciation of, and knowledge about, the game.

5. Post-round player compilation videos
This is a recommendation for the digital side. As it becomes increasingly possible to film more and more shots and to store these shots online, there’s a great opportunity to get creative. I’ve had this idea for a long time: compilation videos that show every shot one player takes during a round, so that if I miss TV coverage but want to re-watch Tyrrell Hatton shoot a closing 74 at Bay Hill in windy conditions, I can go online and do exactly that. From the start of a player’s swing to the moment when the ball stops, a shot can take anywhere from less than three seconds for short putts to roughly 20 seconds for the longest possible drives. Let’s be conservative and estimate that the average is 10 seconds. That means if a player shoots 70, a video of every shot would run under 12 minutes.

This is asking quite a lot, I realise; video storage and camera coverage might not quite be up to snuff yet. But even a partial compilation would be a welcome way to experience our favourite players and get more eyeballs on more shots.

The post With The Match in mind, five key innovations to improve golf on TV appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

So freaking classy. My apologies to cardigans everywhere. Arnie knew what’s up. Anyway, here’s what other important (and not-so-important) topics have us talking this week.

WE’RE BUYING

Tyrrell Hatton: In your face, Paul Azinger! At least, that’s what a lot of Europeans were feeling after the Brit won his first PGA Tour title—just a few months removed from wrist surgery (more on that later)—at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. And what a hard-fought victory it was as Hatton became the first player to win a PGA Tour event with two over-par scores on the weekend since Geoff Ogilvy at the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

Kevin C. Cox

Also, how good has this Florida Swing been? So much carnage! And we have another Winged Foot U.S. Open to look forward to in June! What a time to be alive! Except for that whole Coronavirus, of course.

European Tour playoff: The Qatar Masters was a wild ride down the stretch as Jorge Campillo went double bogey-bogey to drop into extra holes. But there, both he and David Drysdale put on a show, each birdieing the 18th hole TWICE (not a par 5, mind you) to keep things going. A third birdie by Campillo on his fifth attempt gave him his second win on “that” European Tour. Good for him, although most were rooting for the 44-year-old Drysdale to win his first in his (gulp) 498th start. Imagine getting into a playoff after all that time, coming up clutch with birdies on the first two extra holes, and still losing? Poor guy.

The Canadian Open(?): Oh, Canada! Thanks to a new metric (MOCCASINS) conceived by Golf Digest’s Shane Ryan and brought to life by stats guru Mark Broadie, this tournament in the Great White North has been deemed the greatest of all non majors. OK, so it’s just a seven-year sample size, but the RBC Canadian Open came in at No. 1 among regular events when it comes to producing the best leader boards based on its field during that time span.

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

The top three tournaments overall—again, according to MOCCASINS—were the PGA Championship, the Open Championship, and the Masters. Sorry, U.S. Open. But don’t worry, you’re still No. 1 in my unofficial CARNAGE ranking.

Rich Beem: The 2002 PGA champ and three-time PGA Tour winner has gotten very familiar with the/that European Tour thanks to his role with Sky Sports the past five years and he joined this week’s Golf Digest Podcast to discuss Azinger’s comments, his infamous victory shimmy, and the player he has a self-professed man-crush on. This was a fun one:

https://soundcloud.com/user-96678684/rich-beem-best-pga-tour-leader-boards

WE’RE SELLING

Rory McIlroy on Sundays: A quick look at the numbers reveals Rory has shot 67-68-69-73-68-76 on Sundays this season. Not bad, right? Well, sometimes stats don’t tell the entire story. McIlroy had those last four tournaments in his hands and didn’t convert any of them into wins. The good scores came thanks to late pushes after he had already lost the tournament. And the bad scores, like Sunday’s 76 at Bay Hill, may have been enough to keep his top-five streak alive, but they were, well, bad.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Look, no one is immune to final-round pressure (other than peak Tiger), but I’d expect an all-time great—which he is as further evidenced by him becoming the third golfer to be ranked World No. 1 for 100 total weeks—like McIlroy to not play like a mere mortal on Sundays.

Brooks Koepka on any day: The four-time major champ’s struggles reached rock bottom (we think) with an accidental tribute to Kobe Bryant on Saturday. On the bright side, Koepka improved on that 81 by 10 shots on Sunday, but offered this blunt assessment of his game after. “Still shit. Still shit. But putting better.”

Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

He’s right, it was better as he finished 44th in strokes gained putting among the 69 players who made the cut. For the season, though, he still ranks 208th(!) in that stat. Woof.

Tiger Woods’ new (sad) schedule: We talked last week about Woods opting to stay away from back-to-back starts, but now he seems to be staying away from non-major starts in general with his decision to skip this week’s Players Championship. The 44-year-old with a fused back is getting closer to a post-crash Ben Hogan (another big cardigan guy) schedule and as sad of a prospect as that is for golf fans, I don’t blame him. Heck, I’m not even 40 yet and I worry about throwing out my back every morning I get out of bed. Those weighted blankets are no joke.

ON TAP

The PGA Tour continues its Florida Swing with the Players Championship, AKA the PLAYERS, AKA that place where even Tiger Woods made a quadruple bogey on the island hole last year. At least Tiger fans don’t have to worry about seeing something like that again with Woods sitting out this week. By the way, I also happen to be a late scratch from TPC Sawgrass, unfortunately. And it has nothing to do with Tiger not being there. I swear. OK, well, maybe it has a little bit to do with that. . .

Random tournament fact: Despite all the debating, the Players Championship is not a major. However, TPC Sawgrass could wind up hosting one this year.

I'm told officials from the PGA Tour and PGA are discussing a contingency plan that could move @PGAChampionship from Harding Park in San Francisco to TPC Sawgrass. PGA statement below. #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/vb1JhQtNUp

— Robert Lusetich (@RobertLusetich) March 9, 2020

As much fun as that would be, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Stay safe out there, folks. And remember to keep washing your hands.

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Tiger will play as many events as Sungjae Im this year: 1-MILLION -to-1 odds
—Brooks Koepka will win the Players: 45-to-1 odds (Actual odds. . . value?)
—The Ponte Vedra Beach Chili’s will do a lot less business without me in town: LOCK

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

That’s the infamous Hinkle Tree being removed from the Inverness Club. The tree, which was planted by the eighth tee before the second round of the 1979 U.S. Open to keep players (notably Lon Hinkle) from using a shortcut to reach the par 5 in two, was cut down after winds recently uprooted it. So RIP Hinkle Tree, but what you stood for won’t be forgotten by the USGA. Protect par at all costs. Even if that means buying a tree for $120 during a golf tournament.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Another week, another full-court putt made at a basketball game. This time the prize was. . . free bacon for a year?

This guy won free bacon for a year… FREE BACON FOR A YEAR!!!

Congrats to Logan for sinking today’s @smokehousemeats Putt for Pig Challenge at @MizzouHoops home finale.#SCTop10 #MIZ ??? pic.twitter.com/dOSlnVEP2m

— Mizzou Athletics (@MizzouAthletics) March 8, 2020

As far as prizes go, this isn’t quite as good as a free car that 84-year-old lady recently got, but it’s a heckuva lot better than the pile of scratch-off tickets the Knicks recently gave some dude for hitting a half-court shot. And in terms of free food, you could do a lot worse than bacon. Mmm. Bacon.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I drank a lot of red wine and played Xbox.” —Tyrrell Hatton on what he did while recovering from his wrist surgery in November.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dWtRonM0N/?utm_source=ig_embed

Right now, there are a lot of college kids wondering why they aren’t better at golf.

THIS WEEK IN PGA TOUR PRO-WAGS PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8sWLc0FnPx/?utm_source=ig_embed

OK, so that is a few weeks old, but it’s the most recent photo we could obtain of this cute couple. Why are we highlighting the Baddeleys, you ask? Because Golf Digest’s latest PGA Tour pro survey OFFICIALLY (sort of) answered an often-asked question concerning WAGs and Richelle came out on top:

Good job by Dave Shedloski and John Huggan doing some important reporting. Just imagining Huggy asking that question made my week. Anyway, the magazine even included this fun illustration:

So congrats to Richelle! And congrats to Aaron! Good going, guy!

THIS AND THAT

Tommy Fleetwood’s active-leading PGA Tour cut streak ended at 33. Pretty good for someone who has only won on that European Tour. . . . Congrats to Ernie Els on winning his first PGA Tour Champions title in his third start and for easily being the guy PGA Tour pros would want on their side in a bar fight, according to our survey. The Big Easy may have been a unanimous choice if he wasn’t 50. . . . The PGA Tour’s new TV deal ensures CBS will continue to broadcast at least 19 events through 2030. In other words, Golf Twitter has something to collectively bitch about for another decade. . . . And as always, my wife—who gets my vote for “best-looking golf writer WAG”—made me this delicious M&M and Kit-Kat encrusted chocolate cake for my birthday:

Although this year, she had to substitute some Cadbury milk chocolate bars around the perimeter because someone* (*me) had already eaten some of the Kit Kats. Anyway, I’m not complaining.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Would Tiger have played if this week was the Masters?
What tree/bunker/lake would you remove from your home course?
What item of food would you like to win a year’s supply of?

The post Tiger Woods’ new (sad) schedule, Tyrrell Hatton’s fun rehab routine, and PGA Tour pros pick the “best-looking” WAG appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
I remember precisely where I was when I wrote it—the media centre at St. Andrews, probably eating some very bland Scottish food, Golf Digest’s Alex Myers sitting to my right, ready to hit the button when I finished.

There have been many good golf trips in my short career, but I still think the 2015 Open Championship was my favourite. Everything they say about the town of St. Andrews is true. It’s beautiful without being pompous, stately without being imposing—the kind of place you feel welcome without having to seek it out. Three of us found an AirBnB two miles from the course, and every morning we’d walk to the course, past gradually more expensive homes, and march through one of the town gates into the village. We’d work all day, and when we filed our last stories around 9 or 10 p.m., it was still light out, so we’d find a pub and stay as late as they’d let us. I didn’t sleep more than five hours the whole week, but the experience was so invigorating that I never felt tired.

Over the course of that week, I wrote a lot of words, culminating in a story about Jordan Spieth’s near-miss that ended the grand slam quest. During one of the early rounds, when the rain and wind stopped play, I spent an afternoon with James Hutchinson, St. Andrews’ environmental manager, and wrote a very long feature about his “secret wars” to keep the course beautiful without damaging the ecosystems of the links. Hutchinson was so kind, and the topic so fascinating to me, that I remember feeling that rare sensation—rare to an Internet journalist, anyway, or at least to me—of actually being fulfilled in some way. That said, it was a story about plants and animals on a golf website, and I’m sure very few people actually read it.

What people did read was another story I dashed off in about an hour one afternoon in the media centre. It was called “Tiger Woods is totally, completely, unequivocally, and utterly done,” and it was designed to provoke. In my memory, I was frustrated about the attention he still captured at a time when his career was stalled out, and I’m sure there was a good deal of bias on my part since I had just written a book about the game’s young stars. That said, reading the story again, it’s written with such obvious hyperbole that I couldn’t have been too mad—mostly, it seems like a lark, something funny and quick and a little outrageous. If it wasn’t spiritually nourishing, I’m sure it was fun to write; quick and easy and sweet, like a box of candy devoured in seconds that only makes you nauseous later.

David Cannon/R&A

The piece has been proven wrong—extravagantly wrong—but by the metrics of the Internet, it was a success then and continues to succeed today. When Tiger won the Tour Championship last season, the story spread, but even that paled in comparison to today’s resurgence—almost immediately after Tiger’s victory putt, two Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers put it on blast, and the rest is history. It’s the kind of thing people love—look at the idiot writer who counted out the greatest golfer of all-time and was dead wrong. Some of the ribbing is good-natured, some are inscrutable, and some is extremely angry. There are people who honestly believe I should lose my job for being wrong about Tiger Woods, and if you presented them with a magic button that could bring about that outcome, they’d mash it vigorously. They think that my tone was “rude” or “disrespectful,” and seem to hold the implicit belief that Tiger himself was somehow hurt or offended. Dumber still, they think this reflects on my “integrity,” as if writing an opinion about Tiger Woods means I have some personal grudge and have set out to destroy him.

That’s OK—writing on the Internet either gives you thick skin, in which case you roll with the hate, or it doesn’t, and you become one of those embarrassing people who always fights with his followers. Still, there’s no way to avoid that low-stomach rumbling of dull dread when hundreds of people are screaming at you online. This is not life and death (although one or two of the reply guys give me pause), and I don’t want or deserve sympathy. In five years, nobody will remember this, and unless life goes shockingly well, I will have much bigger problems within the next…oh, ten minutes or so.

That said, a word in my defence: Yes, I was very wrong about Tiger. But this stuff is meant to be fun—people who write about sports, especially on the Internet, produce a lot of content, and that content is designed, like any content anywhere, to attract an audience. Editorial sports content is at its best when it feels conversational, and part of a conversation is just rattling off unsound, unprovable, or utterly wrong opinions in an entertaining way. If you and your friend were having a chat one night in 2016, and your friend said he thought Tiger was washed up, would you call him up and scream at him now?

Maybe you would. But I submit that if you’re getting mad about this stuff, you’re taking it too seriously, you’re not understanding what the opinion side of Internet sports writing is for, and you’re also vastly overestimating the impact any of this will have on Tiger Woods. You should not read a piece that includes this paragraph…

“Someday, we may invent time machines, and then we can travel back to the year 2000. When we arrive there, Tiger Woods will not be done. Perhaps when we die, we’ll get a chance to revisit our lives in some capacity, and we’ll pass through that brief epoch when Tiger Woods was not done. Maybe we will eventually learn that life is a dream or a simulation and that Tiger Woods never truly existed, just as you and I and these words you’re reading don’t exist. In that case, Tiger will not be done, but nor will he be undone. But until any of these things happen, Tiger Woods will remain done.”

… and let yourself fly into a conniption that still leaves you raw and red four years later. You don’t need to fight on Tiger’s behalf, because I guarantee you he does not care. He did not care when I was prematurely dancing on his grave in 2015, and in his triumph today, he also explicitly does not care about the Golf Digest blog guy who spread greatly exaggerated rumours of his demise.

So calm the **** down.

Now, that said … I was wrong about Tiger Woods. Wrong then, wrong now, wrong forevermore. Gigantically, calamitously wrong. Tiger Woods owns me, I’ve been humbled, and my humiliation will be plastered on the Internet until that blessed day when I steal the Internet keys from my editor and delete it from the face of the earth. Laugh at me, point at me, and have your fun—I will sit here and take it, and I will be mostly okay with that.

The post I wrote the wrongest possible Tiger Woods take, and the Internet will never let me forget it appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.