Sunday’s surprise announcement that Fox had abandoned its deal with USGA seven years earlier was a blow to anyone who had grown up to appreciate Fox’s approach to golf.
That appreciation grew along with Fox, of course, who certainly had a rocky start in 2015 before they found the foot and became the most innovative net for sports. Fox’s broadcasts seemed legitimately different and they also felt real big events. Much of this was Joe Buck’s phone call. Even the appreciation for Buck himself has obviously grown over time, and while there have been some specific mistakes for golf (now mistaking the name of Brooks Koepka’s girlfriend in 2017 is almost a cliché example), having the ability to change gears in golf he helped demonstrate just how versatile Buck can be as a broadcaster.
In a long look at Golf.com, Buck himself spoke of the pressure to do it well, what makes golf different to produce and pre-game beers for the crew. The whole is excellent, but some of the most relevant moments, including this accurate section where known as Fox has pushed forward the golf broadcast.
People are writing condolence notes to me. Sorry for your loss. I would have liked to keep doing it. I am OBSERVED with golf. I play as much as possible with or without our 2 year old twins at home. We at Fox would continue to improve more and more in broadcasting golf. But I wouldn’t change our five-year run for nothing, because of the people I worked with (starting with our producer, Mark Loomis), what we lived together, what we learned. Here are a few short lessons: let players and caddies talk. Less is better. From the field it is better than from the cabin. And innovations from Fox Sports’ production perspective will become an important part of television coverage elsewhere. Drone shots and multiple tracers are already available.
Buck also stressed what makes golf more difficult to call, and why Fox in particular was at a disadvantage:
Broadcasting golf is not like broadcasting baseball or football. See the ball and the action with your own eyes. The story is unfolding in front of you. In golf, the story takes place here and there and everywhere. As the transmission tower guy, you get it all on the screens and from the field reporters. It is a difficult business. And basically we were organizing one PGA Tour event per year and one LPGA event per year. (The fabulous US Women’s Open, where I worked with the fabulous Juli Inkster. You want her next to you in a broadcast booth, to your guest-member, to a baseball game.) One of our basic challenges is that there is we were doing it many repetitions, to use a Tigerism. This is not an excuse. But it is a starting point.
Whether Buck intended it this way or not, he talks about a big reason why Fox is leaving early (and paying half the NBC fee fees to bring USGA events.) Golf has never become a part anymore large in Fox’s portfolio, and while their presentation for the Women’s Open and various amateur leagues were top notch, the lack of broader content left golf at the bottom of the list for Fox when the time came for understand how to set the schedule for a crowded Covid-induced autumn calendar.
The potential for college football, the NFL and MLB to have all the games meant that Fox would consider some very difficult choices and, unlike CBS (which carved a piece from the current NFL schedule for a Masters Sunday in the autumn) they don’t “I have dozens of other weeks of golf during the year to make it useful. It’s a shame, because things were going in a very good direction, and maybe this anecdote Buck illustrates better because the atmosphere Fox was such a nice start:
