NBC chooses not to schlep to Beijing for badminton
Interesting story from Tribune teammate (for now) Teddy Greenstein about NBC covering some sports in the Olympics the same way many of you do: Watching on TV in New York.
On an entirely different subject, here's a story from our two-rivers-over friends at The Star-Ledger about the potential investment value of the dreaded personal seat license.
I don't have too much to add to ABC's coverage of the British Open, oh, sorry, I mean, "The Open Championship," after Greg Norman's painful, slow-motion fade.
What stood out for me on the broadcast was Paul Azinger's willingness to bluntly criticize Norman's strategy. It was bold, and he turned out to be right.
You hardly ever hear criticism like that of Tiger Woods from network voices. Is that because they are afraid of him, or because he never is wrong? Or both?
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Comments (8)
Did Norman do a slow-motion fade? Did Azinger turn out to be right?
After Norman bogeyed the first three holes, he battled back to take the lead into the back 9. Not really a fade.
As for using the driver, he surely did miss fairways -- but all the players were missing plenty of fairways, no matter the club, something the announcers did not mention. The course was hard!
One subtle difference was that Norman missed fairways closer to the hole, which helped him to make 37 greens in regulation over the four days -- to Harrington's 38. Both averaged more GIR than the field average, so I'm not sure how Norman using driver was such a bad strategy -- he did better than virtually all other players not using driver.
Fair points, Len! I think you know more about golf than I do.
On the other hand, Tom Watson agreed with Azinger on SportsCenter. And he definitely knows more about golf than I do.
You also never hear George Carlin's 100% accurate take on golf: a boring game played by boring people. This silly waste of land that could be put to use 1,000 better ways interfered with the coverage out of the IRL race in Ohio. Fortunately ABC had video of what we have been waiting for all year: the Saturday practice confrontation between the moderately talented driver but supreme whiner Danica Patrick taking on the other female: completely talentless with a rich sponsor and just as attractive Milka Duno. Angry (justifiably) that Duno blocked her passing attempts, Danica visited her in her pit lane. Unlike Jeff Gordon, Danica has guts enough to take her helmet off. Milka got fed up, threw a towel at her and told Danica to go away, you can't intimidate me with your gender as you do with the male drivers. Danica went running off threatening to report Duno to IRL race director Brian Barnhart. Not as good as Cale Yarborough fighting Donnie and Bobby Allison at the 1979 Daytona 500 or Ayrton Senna punching Eddie "Motormouth" Irvine at the 1993 Japanese Grand Prix.
If you can get footage of the Moto GP race from Laguna Seca, CA that was on CBS Sunday at 5PM, please watch the 18 lap duel between defending champion Casey stoner and 5 time champion Valentino "The doctor" Rossi. Wow!! pure excitement with Rossi holding off the more powerful Ducati of Stoner until Stoner wobbled and crashed. But Stoner had the presence to keep the bike running (they don't have electrical starters) and still finished second. 2006 champion, Nicky Hopkins of Kentucky, finished 5th. They will be racing at the Brickyard (Indianapolis) for the first time in September. How can people not watch motorcycle races? Only an hour long, racing on road corners (corners), a decent number of Americans, Rossi oozes charisma from his elfin-like presence. But people want to hear about golf. Do they need a cure for insomnia?
Oh yeah. Watching people drive in circles is so much more exciting than golf.
Neil,
You are right -- Tom Watson agreed with Paul Azinger (as have many other golf folk). And I'm not discounting their thoughts, or saying they don't have merit.
But as often is the case, they address only the part of the story that proves their point.
What I would love to know -- and maybe you could find out -- is: If Norman's strategy was so bad, why wasn't it bad the first three rounds, after which he took a lead into Sunday? And if it WAS so bad, HOW did he take a lead after three rounds? And if Watson/Azinger were doing something for three rounds that worked so marvelously, would THEY change their strategy the next day?
Len
Ok this has me a bit stumped--why did every network stop calling it The British Open and called it just The Open?
Another (somewhat related) question: if Bob Papa is calling Olympic boxing for NBC-TV and this is during the period when there are NFL exhibition games (shoot me I dare you!) who will replace him on Giants radio and the NFL Network telecast(s) during this time period?
How are you. Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
I am from Wales and learning to speak English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "An online dating service doesn require participants to meet the people they interact with in person.Using online dating services to find dates and."
Thank you very much ;). Monika.