When it comes to watching professional golf tournaments on TV, everyone is a critic.
That goes double for the majors. On a wild Saturday with a bunched leaderboard, Tommy Roy, NBC’s lead golf producer, faced a difficult task of showing the drama unfold. Where was local boy Keegan Bradley? Why was the final group, with Collin Morikawa sputtering, ghosted? How many “Playing Through” commercials could we possibly see?
The complaining on social media was plentiful, and we’ll get there, but first a couple of plaudits do need to be passed out. Watching the early morning broadcast some six hours before the final group teed off offered some great insight as analyst Arron Oberholser explained the risk-reward challenge of the tee shot at 18 with help from Justin Leonard in the booth. About 10 hours later, defending champion Jon Rahm drove into the left fairway bunker that Oberholser warned viewers about and hit the lip with his second shot, eventually making double bogey and squandering his lead. If you watched this segment, you were prepped for Rahm’s 18th-hole disaster.
