In a roundtable discussion with Jim Nantz, Nick Faldo, Peter Kostis, Gary McCord, Dottie Pepper, Ian Baker-Finch and Amanda Balionis, we covered a variety of topics from what fans don't see on TV to their favorite tournaments to how they handle feedback from fans and players. Here's a glimpse into the minds of some of golf's most recognizable voices and how this close-knit group interacts when the cameras aren't rolling. (...)
What are some challenges to broadcasting golf that the average fan sitting at home doesn’t realize?
Pepper: Everything. It’s a city that gets put up and broken down every week and relocated. The logistics of it are incredibly thick. If you just think about the towers that go up however many stories, they have to have an occupancy certificate. So this is so far in advance, but people think you just flick the light switch and it magically happens. There’s miles and miles of cable, and trucks, and it’s a city that moves every time we move. It’s not like you can just plug it in and press play.
Kostis: There’s also when they watch the show they see this seamless transition of Jim to Nick talking, to throwing it to 16 to this and that, and it’s very soothing. What they fail to realize what’s going on in our ear pieces. An announcer’s first rule is never, ever let what’s going in your ear come out your mouth. Ever. So while it seems like it’s a slow-moving sport, in our world, our lives exist in six-second increments, and we’ve got two people talking to us in our headphones while we’re trying to say something on air. From our perspective, it can be chaotic at times, even if it comes across as anything but.
Pepper: There are no timeouts. There’s a ball in the air all the time, even if we’re not on the air live. So that has to be covered as well.
How do you handle the various roles you play on the broadcast, and what’s your weekly prep schedule like?
Faldo: I still like to prepare myself as a golfer. I always go out and see the golf course, I still draw my own greens to make sure I know when someone misses the green long right, I can blurt out, “He’s dead,” and be 99-percent right. I like to chat to players to get an inside scoop on where they are, what they’re working on. You can know where there confidence level is. So I do all of that and then when I jump in the tower, Jim tees us up and I react to a picture.
Balionis: If it’s a course I haven’t been to, I try to come in on a Thursday as opposed to a Friday and walk the course to get a feel for it. It’s not like I’m doing any analysis, but it makes me feel more comfortable with my whereabouts. And then it’s a lot of watching the broadcast Thursday/Friday, reading every article possible, and really keeping an eye on social media because we’ve found players are less likely sometimes to talk to a reporter than they are to directly connect with fans. But I also go to the range to talk to coaches and caddies to make sure I can ask informed questions. You can never have too much information going in.
Kostis: Like Nick said, it really isn’t much different from playing in the sense you do all your practicing, you do all your work, you do all your drills, but when you get to the first tee, you leave all that behind and you just play. For Dottie and I, we often don’t even know which groups we’re going to be walking with. So you prepare for a whole bunch of stuff, but you can’t guarantee that you’re prepared for that group because you never saw them coming when we were in rehearsal.
Pepper: You have a bit of a safety net because you’ve prepared for so many, but if I had to put the math to it, I think I use about 3 percent of what I’ve prepared for on the air.
Nantz: Times have changed, though. Early in our careers, we didn’t have cable coverage that came right up to within 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever the window is until we take over the broadcast. It used to be, in Chirkinian’s world, really important to nail the rehearsal. We seriously rehearsed.
McCord: Yep, half hour. Solid.
Nantz: You’d go through golf action, cutting from hole to hole. He wanted everyone to get into a flow so we’d do the full broadcast like you were doing a rehearsal for a play. Then we’d turn around and go on the air. And if you screwed around, he would yell at you. So by the time you came on the air, it was just a continuum of what you’d done. You were duped into feeling you’d already been on the air. Obviously, those days are long gone now. It was different. (...)
How do you balance covering players while maintaining good relationships with them? Peter, how much blowback have you gotten for breaking down players' swings?
Kostis: Other than the fact Tiger wouldn’t talk to me for a year-and-a-half.
Faldo: Only a year-and-a-half?
Nantz: That’s pretty good.
Kostis: I don’t think I’m being critical when I discuss their swings. I’m being honest and evaluating. Nine times out of 10, if he’s hit the ball right, I’m figuring out what he did that caused that. There’s too many different golf swings out there to say this one is no good and that one is. I just describe what happened, and I’ve had way more players come up to me and say I was right than have complained about what I said. I’ve had less than a handful of players complain. (...)
Anyone else have run-ins with players?
Nantz: You know, they’re really decent guys. And I have the context of seeing a lot of different sports, and for golfers, it’s different for me. By in large, your stars of the sport are around for a long time, and you travel in the same circles. We see them at our hotels, we see them at restaurants, a great many of us, full disclosure, see them at outings together away from tournament weeks. You get to know the player, the family, their children. My wife gets to know some of the wives. And this is not an exception, we all travel in the same circles. You can’t put a wall up and say “I’ve got to cover them, I can’t really get close to them or get to know them.” Part of what makes it so good is we have really great relationships with the subjects we’re covering. And I think that comes out on the air every week.
What are your thoughts on the amount of coverage Tiger Woods gets during a telecast?
Kostis: It’s a cliche, but he doesn’t move the needle, he is the needle right now. You’ve got to cover him. He’s got a tremendous amount of stories to tell, too, with all the injuries and surgeries. Look, half the people who watch Tiger hate him and hope he shoots 90, and the other half hopes he wins by 15. So you’re always going to make someone unhappy with your coverage, too much or too little. Hey, he’s changed the game.
Faldo: He’s probably the most intriguing sportsman on the planet so you have to be there whatever he does. Everything is a story with him. People will start about Augusta and what he’ll be able to do there, he’s like no athlete ever in any sport.
What are some challenges to broadcasting golf that the average fan sitting at home doesn’t realize?
Pepper: Everything. It’s a city that gets put up and broken down every week and relocated. The logistics of it are incredibly thick. If you just think about the towers that go up however many stories, they have to have an occupancy certificate. So this is so far in advance, but people think you just flick the light switch and it magically happens. There’s miles and miles of cable, and trucks, and it’s a city that moves every time we move. It’s not like you can just plug it in and press play.Kostis: There’s also when they watch the show they see this seamless transition of Jim to Nick talking, to throwing it to 16 to this and that, and it’s very soothing. What they fail to realize what’s going on in our ear pieces. An announcer’s first rule is never, ever let what’s going in your ear come out your mouth. Ever. So while it seems like it’s a slow-moving sport, in our world, our lives exist in six-second increments, and we’ve got two people talking to us in our headphones while we’re trying to say something on air. From our perspective, it can be chaotic at times, even if it comes across as anything but.
Pepper: There are no timeouts. There’s a ball in the air all the time, even if we’re not on the air live. So that has to be covered as well.
How do you handle the various roles you play on the broadcast, and what’s your weekly prep schedule like?
Faldo: I still like to prepare myself as a golfer. I always go out and see the golf course, I still draw my own greens to make sure I know when someone misses the green long right, I can blurt out, “He’s dead,” and be 99-percent right. I like to chat to players to get an inside scoop on where they are, what they’re working on. You can know where there confidence level is. So I do all of that and then when I jump in the tower, Jim tees us up and I react to a picture.
Balionis: If it’s a course I haven’t been to, I try to come in on a Thursday as opposed to a Friday and walk the course to get a feel for it. It’s not like I’m doing any analysis, but it makes me feel more comfortable with my whereabouts. And then it’s a lot of watching the broadcast Thursday/Friday, reading every article possible, and really keeping an eye on social media because we’ve found players are less likely sometimes to talk to a reporter than they are to directly connect with fans. But I also go to the range to talk to coaches and caddies to make sure I can ask informed questions. You can never have too much information going in.
Kostis: Like Nick said, it really isn’t much different from playing in the sense you do all your practicing, you do all your work, you do all your drills, but when you get to the first tee, you leave all that behind and you just play. For Dottie and I, we often don’t even know which groups we’re going to be walking with. So you prepare for a whole bunch of stuff, but you can’t guarantee that you’re prepared for that group because you never saw them coming when we were in rehearsal.
Pepper: You have a bit of a safety net because you’ve prepared for so many, but if I had to put the math to it, I think I use about 3 percent of what I’ve prepared for on the air.
Nantz: Times have changed, though. Early in our careers, we didn’t have cable coverage that came right up to within 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever the window is until we take over the broadcast. It used to be, in Chirkinian’s world, really important to nail the rehearsal. We seriously rehearsed.
McCord: Yep, half hour. Solid.
Nantz: You’d go through golf action, cutting from hole to hole. He wanted everyone to get into a flow so we’d do the full broadcast like you were doing a rehearsal for a play. Then we’d turn around and go on the air. And if you screwed around, he would yell at you. So by the time you came on the air, it was just a continuum of what you’d done. You were duped into feeling you’d already been on the air. Obviously, those days are long gone now. It was different. (...)
How do you balance covering players while maintaining good relationships with them? Peter, how much blowback have you gotten for breaking down players' swings?
Kostis: Other than the fact Tiger wouldn’t talk to me for a year-and-a-half.
Faldo: Only a year-and-a-half?
Nantz: That’s pretty good.
Kostis: I don’t think I’m being critical when I discuss their swings. I’m being honest and evaluating. Nine times out of 10, if he’s hit the ball right, I’m figuring out what he did that caused that. There’s too many different golf swings out there to say this one is no good and that one is. I just describe what happened, and I’ve had way more players come up to me and say I was right than have complained about what I said. I’ve had less than a handful of players complain. (...)
Anyone else have run-ins with players?
Nantz: You know, they’re really decent guys. And I have the context of seeing a lot of different sports, and for golfers, it’s different for me. By in large, your stars of the sport are around for a long time, and you travel in the same circles. We see them at our hotels, we see them at restaurants, a great many of us, full disclosure, see them at outings together away from tournament weeks. You get to know the player, the family, their children. My wife gets to know some of the wives. And this is not an exception, we all travel in the same circles. You can’t put a wall up and say “I’ve got to cover them, I can’t really get close to them or get to know them.” Part of what makes it so good is we have really great relationships with the subjects we’re covering. And I think that comes out on the air every week.
What are your thoughts on the amount of coverage Tiger Woods gets during a telecast?
Kostis: It’s a cliche, but he doesn’t move the needle, he is the needle right now. You’ve got to cover him. He’s got a tremendous amount of stories to tell, too, with all the injuries and surgeries. Look, half the people who watch Tiger hate him and hope he shoots 90, and the other half hopes he wins by 15. So you’re always going to make someone unhappy with your coverage, too much or too little. Hey, he’s changed the game.
Faldo: He’s probably the most intriguing sportsman on the planet so you have to be there whatever he does. Everything is a story with him. People will start about Augusta and what he’ll be able to do there, he’s like no athlete ever in any sport.
by Alex Meyers, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. I'd imagine it's basically similar for all sports broadcasts.]
[ed. I'd imagine it's basically similar for all sports broadcasts.]
