Get Up Eight Times

I don’t usually talk about how bad announcing coverage is for any sporting event just because it seems like sour grapes, but it’s worth discussing how bad ESPN’s coverage for The Open Championship has been. And this is generally surprising. Normally I don’t notice golf announcers; they provide a little bit of background, they talk about club selection, they talk about where the putts will break, they attempt storytelling (*cough* Nantz *cough*), and then they move on. Unless you’re Johnny Miller or Nick Faldo, the less I notice you the better.

However, it seems the Tiger Woods injury has made everyone at Bristol a little antsy. They knew the ratings would be down, they know that the casual sports fan. And I’m sure if it was just a typical tournament with a bunch of the usuals contending.

But the moment Greg Norman started hanging around, it seems they went through. They talked about how cool it was, and then went out of their way to jinx him for about 24 hours during the slowest sports cycle of the year. If Norman still gave a damn about winning, he should mail a turd sandwich express to the WWL for the assist in his last Sunday collapse.

The usually steady Mike Tirico has either been overworked, or is getting pressured from the producers upstairs: Stick to storyline. It doesn’t help that his analysts were more wooden than Steven Segal’s acting. Paul Azinger seems to be spending most of the broadcast trying to fill out his Ryder Cup roster, occasionally returning to utter some half-baked “this is the toughest round of his life” cliche nonsense. And Tom Watson might be a class citizen for all I know, but how interested would you be in Tim Duncan broadcasting a basketball game?

I’ve never had anything against him before, but everytime Tom Rinaldi has opened his mouth this weekend I’ve wanted to stuff my dirty gym socks so he could gag on them. Then I’d ask him how he feels at this moment. Getting RickReillyed wasn’t the most pleasant experience of my life, but to say it was the most pleasant part of ESPN’s coverage should be saying a lot. And I just felt sorry for Judy Rankin, who had to actually interview Chris Evert and come up with reasonable questions.

Everything has been glossed over. No analysis, minimal golf chatter, just feelings and emotions and enough jinxes to make any professional gambler queasy. Is this the Open or Grey’s Anatomy?

This seems to be symptomatic of ESPN on ABC, which seems to try to outdo everyone in terms of storyline. They saw Tiger’s leg injury and tried their best to play up the Shark’s revival. They keep on playing Monday Morning QB when they should be covering an event, trying to write the denouement before the game’s even been played.

There was one silver lining; the venerable Peter Alliss’s two hour cameo in the middle of coverage. The moment Alliss started talking, everyone shifted back to professional, and all the maudlin crap.