10 Grievances I Have With How Golf Is Covered On TV

If you’ve been reading MGS the past couple of years, you probably know my feelings on golf coverage.

It’s clunky and archaic. There are too many commercials and the viewer experience is rarely considered. At times, it’s barely watchable.

That’s why I’m so high on events like the Internet Invitational bursting onto the scene. As I wrote last week, that tournament wasn’t held back by many of the issues inherent with professional golf being on TV.

That’s not to say there isn’t room for both—PGA Tour golf and pure entertainment golf—but the Tour could learn a thing or two from how golf is covered on YouTube.

Even putting that to the side, I have a lot of grievances with how Tour golf is shown on TV. Some of these are small details but small details matter.

If you don’t like cranky old men (well, 33-year-old men) yelling at clouds, you can skip ahead to the next story.

In no particular order, here are 10 parts of Tour coverage on TV that drive me crazy.

1. Playing Through is an abomination

We’re all aware that TV contracts are the lifeblood of any major professional sports league. Those contracts have to be paid somehow, so we get a bevy of commercials.

My issue here is not that there are commercials—that part is totally reasonable—it’s how the audience is completely abused by them.

Playing Through or Eye On The Course where an ad plays while the golf is shown on a small corner of the screen is such a middle finger to anyone watching. You can barely see what is happening. Imagine gambling on a player and having to watch on 18 percent of your TV with the only audio being the commercial.

This invention reeks of someone who doesn’t care about golf fans at all. They saw a way to screw people over en route to dollar signs.

Just go to commercial and come back with the golf on the full screen.

2. There is a dearth of creative advertising

This leads directly into my second grievance, the lack of compelling advertising within the coverage.

Golf is unique in that there are no breaks in the action. Going to commercial means important shots are being hit while the audience can’t see them.

So it’s always been puzzling to me why golf doesn’t implement more creative advertising within the product itself. We have seen this done brilliantly with the Aon Risk-Reward Challenge, which is additive to the viewer and the advertiser. Having a driving distance grid sponsored by an OEM is another example of positive in-round advertising.

Put more of the commercials within the golf. Other sports have done this successfully—in-game cutaways for 10-second ads, more logos within the audience’s field of vision, etc.—but golf seems to be lagging behind on this one.

3. There are way too many streaming services required

Over the past few weeks, there has been a controversy with YouTube TV dropping ESPN channels because Disney is trying to squeeze them. It’s gotten so bad that YouTube TV is offering subscribers a $20 credit for the inconvenience.

This a problem U.S. golf fans are intimately familiar with. To watch golf, you need access to CBS, NBC and Golf Channel—presumably with a streaming service like YouTube TV, DirecTV or something else. But then, if you want better ad-limited coverage with featured groups, you also have to subscribe to ESPN+ for $13 per month. And if you want to watch early or late coverage at the U.S. Open and Open Championship, you’ll need to subscribe to Peacock for $11 a month (ads) or $17 a month (no ads).

And then let’s talk about the Masters. The tournament has coverage on ESPN so all the YouTube TV subscribers might need to find another way to watch. And the Masters is also adding coverage on Paramount+, which is $8 a month (ads) or $13 a month (no ads).

Oh, did I mention that, for the most important tournaments, the audience is being asked to flip between these services three or four times in a day?

This is lunacy. I don’t mean to beat the proverbial dead horse about YouTube golf but you can watch unlimited ad-free coverage on-demand for $14 per month.

4. The leaderboard bug often updates out of order

One of the minor details about golf that irks me is how the leaderboard bug on the bottom of the screen—a no-brainer invention that golf broadcasts didn’t have until Fox started experimenting during its U.S. Open coverage—will update out of order relative to the golf being shown.

What I mean is that the mini leaderboard will update with how someone finished a hole without the audience getting any context to how it happened.

“Oh, cool, I guess Russell Henley made a birdie. Would have been nice to see that.”

A lot of times the coverage will go back to show how the player got to that number but the surprise has already been spoiled.

This is always confusing to me. Just update the board after you show each player. We’re not talking about 20 guys—it’s a handful of players.

Not being able to keep up with that is the clearest evidence possible there are too many commercials relative to the golf being played.

5. There are too many announcers trying to talk at once

I enjoy many of the voices we have in the game at the moment. Trevor Immelman, Curt Byrum, Jim McKay, Smylie Kaufman, Dottie Pepper and Colt Knost are all examples of entertaining, informative commentators for pro golf coverage.

This grievance is more about how there are simply too many people trying to talk at the same time.

I’m of the mentality that golf is better when you let it breathe. If there was a stream offered with no commentators at all, I would subscribe to that in a heartbeat (add it to the subscription pile).

This is another thing the Internet Invitational nailed—no narration or outside commentary. The players themselves did the commentating.

While that isn’t really possible for Tour golf, it would make a lot more sense to cut down the number of commentators. Let those commentators get a little more room to talk—and let the golf speak for itself.

6. There is minimal coverage around who makes the cut

Woof, this one really gets me going.

Having a cut is one of the most naturally compelling parts of a professional golf tournament. You either make a paycheck or you don’t.

Sure, a lot of these guys are already making obscene amounts of money. But a lot of them haven’t reached that point and are searching to establish themselves. It’s also not all about money. There is a competitive factor. Even the most successful golfers loathe missing a cut.

Even knowing this, golf telecasts rarely examine the cut line like they should. They might cut to someone with a putt on their 36th hole of the tournament but they aren’t following them down the stretch unless it’s a huge name.

Let’s see the guys who are really facing pressure: the guys who have to make the cut to avoid losing their Tour card.

7. The FedEx Cup cutoffs are displayed incorrectly

We’re going very “inside baseball” for this next one.

You know how the FedEx Cup cuts down the field at each event during (and leading into) the playoffs?

The coverage will, for example, show players battling around the 100th spot.

The bubble graphic correctly compares the point total of the 101st-ranked player to the 100th-ranked player, showing how many points they are trailing by (that the points have no intuitive value to the audience is a story for another day).

However, the bubble graphic also compares the golfers 99th or better to the 100th-ranked player, which is incorrect. 

The golfers 99th or better (as well the golfer in 100th) should be compared to the point total of the golfer in the 101st position because they are just trying beat that guy.

If the guy in 99th slides back to 100th, he still stays inside the bubble.

This is an issue on all bubble graphics (Top 30, Top 50, Top 100) for both CBS and NBC.

It’s just a reminder of how convoluted the points system is and how difficult it is to comprehend.

8. There is a lack of player-caddie audio

The player-caddie conversation prior to hitting a shot is one of the most interesting pieces of audio in all of sports. It’s as if you could listen in on a pitcher and catcher talking about how to strike out a hitter.

We don’t get much of it for a few reasons.

First off, there are so many commercials. Fans want to see golf shots so production crews prioritize a breakneck pace between golfers. That doesn’t leave much time for a 40-second conversation that focuses on just one shot.

Secondly, as mentioned, there are too many people who want to fill that air with their own voice.

And, lastly, players and caddies tend to be protective of their audio and don’t want to be caught saying something bad. I’ve always found this one puzzling because it’s a TV product—you are being paid to put your performance on TV. Your golf skill has no value if it isn’t packaged into a product.

Maybe one day we’ll get more player-caddie audio. I won’t be holding my breath.

9. There is just too much wasted space

We’ve talked about the commercial load, Playing Through and the desire to show as many golf shots as possible.

If all of those variables can’t change, that means broadcasts have to be unbelievably efficient within the windows they get.

I can’t be alone in thinking that they are not, in fact, efficient within those windows.

All of the wasted space—event sponsor interviews, updates on other tours, inane graphics that add little context, cutaways to B-roll footage that give the audience a sense of place—becomes that much more frustrating.

With how golf and its commercial load is structured, all of that wasted space has to be eliminated. There just isn’t room for it. Anything that isn’t a golf shot or directly related to the golf has to go.

Because if you don’t eliminate all of that wasted space …

10. The broadcast regularly loses track of players

God help NBC if they are faced with more than a handful of players in contention on a Sunday afternoon.

You might as well just pull up the Tour’s live scoring and follow along on Twitter.

It’s a regular occurrence for a player in contention to make a birdie and the broadcast goes five, 10, 15 minutes without showing the highlight—if they even show it at all.

Once again, this issue is brought on by everything else listed here.

I’m sure there are more grievances of how golf on TV is covered so help me fill out the rest of the list.

What grinds your gears about golf on TV?

Let me know below in the comments.

Top Photo Caption: Golf on TV can be very difficult to watch. (GETTY IMAGES/Ben Jared)