Golf on TV
The year was 1986, and my professional goals and aspirations were in W need
of Dr. Kevorkian. "Limited success" was a nice way of describing my playing
career. The tour was a vast, empty wasteland of setbacks and spent money. I was
serving out the rest of my sentence with no chance of parole. Golf sucks.
As
I boarded my airplane for Columbus, Ohio, nothing really was on my mind other
than the two fat vacuum-cleaner salesmen I was going to be sitting between in
the coach section. I was in my customary hesitant gaze when I was awakened by
harsh criticism coming from the first-class section. It was the CBS crew that
does golf, already enjoying the amenities of first class (although in a plastic
cup) before takeoff.
Frank Chirkinian, the executive producer and director
for CBS at the time, Pat Summerall, Ben Wright (the evil swine): All of them
were basking in the knowledge that I was to be forever lost in the coach section
wedged between two obese and slightly pungent salesmen who got their wardrobes
from the Salvation Army. They said I could come up and use their restroom if I
could peel myself from between the two guys. I hoped that the front of the
airplane would fall off.
We were all going to Jack Nicklaus's golf
tournament, the Memorial, in Columbus. We had just left Fort Worth, Texas, where
I had played and CBS had televised the Colonial Invitational. I had just been
elected to the policy board of the PGA Tour — the players elect three members of
the tour, and along with three officers of the PGA of America and three
independent business leaders, we make up the tour policy board, which basically
runs the PGA Tour. It's a very important job for an idiot like me to have, but
the players thought that my life wasn't miserable enough, so they staked me to
this tree.
I was going to Columbus not to play in Nicklaus's tournament — it
was an invitational, and I wasn't high enough on the money list to buy a Big Mac
— but to go to policy-board meetings for the first three days of the week. They
were closed-door meetings in which I could catch up on my sleep. The next
tournament, the Kemper, was in Washington, D.C., but I wouldn't have to leave
until the end of the week.
I was fighting for position on the armrest of seat
28B when the flight attendant came by and presented me with a bottle of
champagne, compliments of the royal family in first class. These guys really
know how to have a good time when the bubbly is free.
I started hesitantly
toward the front of the plane to thank my benefactors and get away from the
sumo-sized bookends I was seated between. As I scurried to first class, I fell
on an idea that could help solve my problem of having nowhere to go after the
policy-board meetings ended on Wednesday. I couldn't afford to go to Washington
early, and I had no money to fly home for the four days in between. I was a
golfer caught in the headlights of bankruptcy.
After some quick banter, I
told Frank that I had nothing to do from Thursday to Sunday, and because I was
on the policy board making decisions about TV contracts, I should watch how a
televised event is produced. "Show up Friday for rehearsal at 11 and check into
the Stouffer's on Thursday; we'll have a room for you," Frank said. "Now get
back to the screaming kids in coach before I have you thrown off the plane for
being up here." He had the bedside manner of Attila the Hun sporting a bad case
of hemorrhoids, but at that moment I loved him.
I showed up promptly at 11,
well fed from gorging on room service and weary-eyed from the menu of movies
that I signed to the room. I was a pig, and I enjoyed the wallow.
I opened
the door to Frank's office, and he bellowed from the confines of his trailer for
me to go out to the 16th hole. He didn't sound like he wanted to engage in light
conversation, so I broke into a slight trot out toward the 16th. I couldn't help
but wonder why I wasn't going to sit in the trucks with Frank while he did the
telecast to gain some insight into how a telecast is produced, every once in a
while getting Frank some snacks or engaging him in casual conversation. Why was
I going to the 16th hole?
As I started to walk toward the tee, a voice came
serenading down from high atop the tower, beckoning me to come up. It was Verne
Lundquist, the veteran announcer. I managed to make my way up the tower and
exchanged idle conversation with Verne's spotter. Verne then handed me a
headset and told me to grab a chair. I asked what the headset was for, and he
said, "Didn't Frank tell you that he wanted to try you as an announcer this
week?" As I weighed the decision between doing some spotting with caddies who
missed the cut and being on national television, the conversation with myself
was, as usual, very short.
"Where do I sit, Verne, and what do I do?" I said.
It looks like this in the tower: A little enclosure is surrounded with clear
plastic, much like the front seat of a car, with the windshield surrounding the
front and you looking out at the green. Two monitors in front of the announcer
show the action taking place and a current leader board. The spotter is next to
you, giving you the scores and the clubs the players are hitting. In this case,
spotter Carl took up most of the room. Carl, who weighs 385 pounds, looks like
he just ate a sumo wrestler. There was not much room left in the front seat of
this car.
My seat was outside this cubicle, next to the cameraman. Looking
down at the action for the first time was really interesting. Golf looks
incredibly easy from way up there. How can those guys screw up so many shots?!?
I was above the tension, up in the clouds. My, how this view changes your
perspective on the game.
But there were voices everywhere. The voice in my
left ear was the director, Frank, and the other voices were all the announcers
from their towers. Occasionally, I would hear a rogue voice, and I had no idea
who it was. I found out later that a guy operating a CB unit in the neighborhood
had come through on our headsets. Welcome to network TV.
The rehearsal went
pretty smoothly. I found out two things:
* Your conversation must be short.
The action jumps all over the place, and you can't get stuck in the middle of a
story.
Never answer anything Frank says directly. The viewers can't hear
Frank.
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