PGA Needs Some High Octane

My britches are all wadded up and here’s why; I saw a headline on another blog on another blog...“NASCAR” in the driver seat; PGA in the rear view mirror.” The subject was how NASCAR is winning the race (excuse the pun) in the negotiations for television contracts, causing the PGA to fight for their scared TV “tee times”...enter the revised, re-revised FedEx Cup.

That got me to thinking. The PGA Tour’s TV coverage is really only exciting to real die hard golfers and then only if Tiger is not in the hunt. No offense to Tiger, but I just want to vomit at the media’s obsession of Tiger. Hey, he’s to golf what Mahmoud Ali was to boxing...OK? Now, get over it!

Watching a PGA event on TV anymore is about as exciting as watching your mother-in-law come through the front door with here luggage in drag; on the other hand...watching a NASCAR event on TV or at the track, on the other hand, is like seeing her ass disappear in the rear seat of a taxi heading out for the airport.

The TV Golf has become so boring even us die hard golfers are having a tough time tuning in. The in-the-booth anchors sound like they are funeral director dropouts and the annalists come across as self appointed psychics who pretend to know every golfer’s intended or unintended execution of any given shot. They are annoying critics, who think only they can analyzes any and every swing flaw of every golfer who has ever wrapped his fingers around the shaft of a nine-iron.

To me, they come across as a bunch of blow hearts who think that every nanno second of every minute must be filled with splattering their verbal graffiti through my surround sound speakers! Talking about that, why in the name of auditory senses do they put microphones on the players then paint their oratory graffiti over the very conversations the fans strain to eaves drop on? Shut up already!

I say let’s have Gary McCord, David Feherty, and John Madden do and be in charge of announcing and directing all TV coverage. Put John Daily in charge of analyzing swings and the beer commercials put Scott Hoch and Rory Sabbatini in charge of public relations and Ian Poulter in charge of dress codes. Or, even better, let’s have a CSPAN golf channel, it could be called GSPAN, where all we could hear is balls being spanked (thanks Srixon), birds singing in the trees, the splash of turtles diving for cover following a sudden and painful thud on their shell from an unsuccessful attempt to skip a ball across #16 pond at Augusta and the occasional passing of gas by the old farts on the Champion’s Tour. GSPAN, could be the golf channel of the future….hey, don’t get me started on the Golf Channel.

Some folks think NASCAR is just a bunch of fancy painted cars going fast and making left turns. They’re right, except those fancy painted cars are traveling at 180+ miles an hour, door knob to door knob, bumper to bumper, gas cap to gas cap while trying to avoid being slammed into a concrete wall head long at a high velocity and being catapulted into the air, flipping end over end down an asphalt race track strewing expensive parts all over the place while other very expensive cars swerve and scatter to avoid the same fate as the driver of the car in flight clinches his teeth and hangs on for dear life. Now that is exciting!

If you are a race fan and have been to a track, you know one of the neatest things about attending a race is to have a scanner and listen to the conversations between the driver, his spotter and his crew chief during the race. Even if you don’t attend a race in person, you can still, via the wonders of cyber-scanners, listen to Earnhardt cuss, Gordon whine, and Steward swear revenge Goodyear right in the comfort of your worn out sweat stained Lazy Boy.

Why don’t we wire up the golfers and their caddies, rent scanners at a PGA events and listen to Fuzz ask Jim “why don’t you just tighten up your belt one more notch so you don’t have to keep hitching up your pants before every shot?”

Yeah, that’s what we should do and then we could listen to the real thing instead of having to listen to a booth full of crows sitting up in the deer stands squawking their oratory blabber all over our expensive Bose surround sound speakers.

I enjoy watching the Champion’s Tour because the guys playing have already carved their initials in the Eisenhower trees of golf, or are club pros that are finally getting a shot at their life’s dream. Plus, these guys realize and appreciate the value of the fans, and are not afraid to look someone in the eye and actually speak to them! I also enjoy the European Tour’s announcers...they are far more respectful of the game and the fans than their American counter parts.

We die hard golfers need to rise up and let our feeling be heard. Golf is not meant to be a spectator sport, it’s a participating sport. So, quit watching golf on TV, give that old Lazy Boy to the church, wipe the cob webs off of your dried up golf bag, call your pals and get out there and play. Oh, by the way, don’t forget to stick a few extra sleeves of Scruffy & Pal golf balls in your bag.

We can’t all be race car drivers, but we can swing and curse at a golf ball while having a few beers with our pals as we pretend we can hit a eight iron 200 yards over a stand of trees onto a green the size of the trunk of a ’57 Cadillac. And, we can celebrate a 100 yard cart path bounce that gives us a career driving distance or the topped chip that goes scalding across the green, catches the pin dead center jumps straight up in the air and falls in the cup for a birdie.

If we must have it, spectator golf desperately needs some high octane infused into it, especially the TV coverage. How about a little more attention and respect to the fans, a whole lot less talk, player/caddy microphones with scanners, and a great big dose of get-over-yourself!

A very wise and thoughtful man once said: “If you don’t change your direction, you will end up where you are heading”.

Did you hear that Mr. TV producers?

Have a nice day!
Crash