2018 PGA Tour Running Thread

Guys do things every week Tiger did in his prime is a new angle.

And I hate how no one has ever appreciated, written about or replayed Phil's shot from the pine straw or Bubba's in the playoff. I actually had to google what those things were because people were too busy writing about Tiger so I'd never heard about them.

Also, the "And here was A Guy We Haven't Shown in Three Hours hitting a shot and...WOW, he makes a long birdie" is a staple of every single tournament since the invention of replay, but I guess we can blame Tiger for that too.

 

I didn't want to watch Willie Mays when he was a washed-up stiff, either. There are lots of great players on the PGA tour. They sure dedicate a lot of air time to one who has been mostly shitty for three years (although I will admit, I loved watching him have the yips, and chip balls 2 feet and so on; that was glorious). Nice that he finished second in the NobodyGivesAShit Open this week. Mediocre players finish high all the time. It's how golf works. Dick, will you tune in to watch Josh Gordon this fall? I mean, he was once the best WR in the NFL, smoked a lot of weed, got suspended a few times, and has come back from that. Very compelling!

 

Junkie, every one of those shots you mentioned are as super famous among golf fans as any Tiger ever hit. Think Phil doesn't get enough coverage in broadcasts? Or Bubba? They get plenty.

 

Again, nobody in the booth was hanging from Bubba's nutsack while he hit that shot. And, no, the only showing all the other good shots in the tournament on replays is not a product of replay, which was around long before Tiger. It's a product of Tiger. The networks would rather show Tiger walk 200 yards between shots than show golf being played. Those of us who actually give a shit about the sport like watching all the players, because we appreciate how good all of them are, not just one of them.

And yeah, guys fucking hit great shots every week. Lots of them. But they aren't accompanied by the slobbering agenda setters.

 

He finished a shot back of the winner!

 

Last week Phil, um, won the tournament. Which at 46, as a guy who hadn't won in, what, five years, was compelling. He was not on camera the entire broadcast, though. When it was Phil's turn to hit, he was on. And had he been in 14th place, he would not have appeared on the air, other than via replay.

 

Golf broadcast coverage is on average relentlessly sycophantic. NBC would've been perfectly willing to give us the Corey Conners story as a heroic epic out of Homer if the guy hadn't blown up Sunday. They sure did on Saturday.

 

What's your point? He finished second in a ho-hum, blah-field event. Watch how many times mid-pack guys do that in a season. We're excited that Tiger finished second by a stroke? Get back to me when he wins, or plays consistently well for more than a week or two. To me this is like watching Brett Favre after his third retirement. He's not what he once was, no matter how much you want him to be. Many, many other players on tour right now are better. Hanging on to Tiger is sad.

 

I'm not sure who you think they should have been showing more of on Sunday afternoon. Patrick Reed in his Tiger Woods Halloween costume?

 

Right. And that's what drives me nuts as a fan of the sport, rather than a fan of a player. I get it. I understand why it happens. But I don't have to like it. I have never enjoyed watching PGA golf as much as the past few years, when Tiger was not a factor. The broadcasts have been so more more watchable to me.

 

Sunday, late afternoon? Maybe nobody. But early on, Paul Casey (you may have read about him in the 14th graf of Ferguson's story), who was actually winning the golf tournament, was a ghost, while we got to see Tiger walk from the car to the course. (I have no idea if they actually showed that, but it sounds like something they would show.)

 

This conversation reminds me of the pre-Super Bowl conversation, where Gee argued that the Patriots rookies were the "only interesting" New England story leading into the Super Bowl, while, in reality, Brady-Belichick was the story for 95 percent of America, and the rest was just filler.

If he's in contention on Sunday, he's going to be the story. If he's 10 back and they are showing Tiger while the leaders are playing Top This, then you have a legitimate gripe.