While The Masters prides itself on being the most pristine sporting event anywhere on the planet, there was one aspect of this past week’s tournament that left so much to be desired.
Rory McIlroy became only the fourth player to win at Augusta National in successive years, with the Northern Irishman finishing one shot clear of Scottie Scheffler.
Obviously, this year’s Masters was almost certainly never going to come close to being as exciting as 12 months ago when the world finally saw McIlroy complete the Career Grand Slam.
But what did not help this year’s event’s chances of hitting similar heights was an uncharacteristically substandard broadcast.
Kevin Kisner strongly criticises the coverage of The Masters
There were a number of moments that left viewers frustrated during The Masters. Scottie Scheffler seemed to completely disappear from the coverage during the middle part of his final round despite his name remaining on the top page of the leaderboard throughout.
The shot-tracers led to some comical moments, particularly when Justin Rose hit his approach on the 13th hole. The ball nearly pitched in the hole, yet the tracer had suggested that it was either ending up in the creek or to the right of it.
And it certainly left a sour taste in the mouth when the cameras did not realise Rory McIlroy‘s approach into 18 had ended up in the bunker. They also picked an angle for his winning putt which made it nearly impossible to see whether the ball had gone in until McIlroy started to celebrate.
And speaking on the Fore Play Podcast, Kevin Kisner admitted that he was baffled by how golf’s flagship event was presented.
“I have a very biased opinion, so I want to go and put that out there before I start since I work for the other network, but running Sirius XM off of – I’ve never done radio in my life until yesterday at 3 o’clock, literally, never even worn a headset in there – and I was so f—— confused the entire time by trying to keep up with the behind the scenes CBS feed. They’re literally showing s— that I knew happened 10 minutes ago all day long,” he said.
“It was so bad that I in fact text Colt Knost during the show and said, ‘do you ever show a live shot? I’m better off following the f—— app than following your feed’, so your entire Masters coverage is a fantasy world. It’s b——-. Whatever we all watch, has already happened seven minutes ago. Can you imagine watching the f—— Super Bowl, like, ‘oh yeah, Tom Brady threw that touchdown seven minutes ago, we’re going to act like it’s live here so our announcers can sound really smart, and we’re going to sit here and he’s going to throw a wide open down the middle, but it actually happened seven minutes ago and everybody in the stadium’s taking a p—’. What are we doing? You have no commercials, play live shots.
“Our production team at NBC prides themselves on playing every shot that they possibly can live. And when we can’t, we have to say a moment ago because we’re trying to make the whole movie make sense. We don’t want to show you a tap-in on 16 and then go, ‘oh yeah, he’s already hitting his shot on 17’, because obviously he has to walk over there. I have no idea what they’re doing, literally no idea. They’re showing every shot on tape. It’s incredible. I don’t even know how the announcers call it. I don’t know how Colt can act like he doesn’t know what’s happening when it’s already happened. There were a couple of shots in two days that I’m telling you were seven to 10 minutes behind. It was unbelievable. I’m not trying to just kill them, but being in TV 30 times and seeing what our production team does, it was fascinating to me.”
This year’s Masters coverage was far from a masterpiece
The Masters is so special because so many people have a certain memory of watching the coverage over the years where the moment was presented absolutely perfectly.
Tiger Woods‘ iconic chip-in in 2005 is somehow made all the more incredible by the commentary. And the camera work is completely flawless.
Few will ever forget how Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman elevated McIlroy’s victory last year. When they spoke, it was intentional. But they were more than happy to put the microphones down and let the pictures say everything for them.
The coverage should leave viewers feeling that they can imagine being among the patrons wherever they are in the world.
Unfortunately, it only takes a handful of mistakes for that illusion to be destroyed.
