The Aping Of American Sports Coverage

I like my golf. Well, not my personal golf you realise - that will no doubt (once I have recovered from my bad back - getting there thank you) transpire still to be wayward. No, I like golf and golf courses. I like it done well and sympathise with it done badly. But there's a problem and it is one I have alluded to before. As Sky Sports throw more and more time (and one presumes more of that nice Mr. Murdoch's money) at their coverage, so it becomes less bearable. Overall the standard is dire - a sort of sentimentalised hard-core mediocrity.

Sky's coverage of the European Tour (must we really take the petro-dollars and call it the DP World Tour?) can largely be exempted from my denigration because the broadcaster generally puts the B Team on the commentary job - Richard Boxall et al. Even Rob Lee has become bearable. Problem is of course that the product (the golf itself) has beend devalued by the wrong-headed machinations of the PGA Tour and its European partner, such that the best players are siphoned-off to ply their trade in the States before an ever-diminishing televisual audience. The game has plummeted from meritocracy to a kleptocracy, running scared of that prize gobshite Greg Norman. Much gets more was how my Yorkshire grandmother used to put it. Quite. Unattractive. 

So what's so wrong with Sky's A Team? Ewen Murray is a great broadcaster but he has ceased to be the dominant voice. Instead we get too much of the pathetic Nick Dougherty and the over-promoted Wayne Riley. I can stomach Riley when he is out on the course but that is where he belongs. Dougherty has talent but bloody hell can a man get his tongue any further up Sir Nick Faldo's arse? Even Faldo (not the most unassuming of men) can seem embarrassed. Dame Laure Davies is excellent but gets drowned-out by the tidal wave of Dougherty's schmaltz and the inanity of Paul McGinley - that Blarney Stone has a lot to answer for. And as for Butch Harmon - well, really?

So what I am saying (ironically in a verbose McGinleyesque manner) is that there is too much blather and not enough objectivity. And it is not the OG pocket that drives this rant - I actually won money on the Masters this year but couldn't be arsed to watch the climax, waiting instead to check out the result when I awoke this morning.