Golf Producer Lance Barrow: ‘Golf Is The Hardest Sport To Do On Television’

[nevets88]

I always give lots of grief to the networks regarding its telecasts, but from the other side of the coin, I know it's a hard job. I like the first answer below, but follow up on it, tv people, follow up on it. Keep it up NBC w/fewer commercials. And figure out a better way to track the ball.

They want to see the competition. They want to see the players playing, and they don’t want anything to get in the way of that. They also want to see where the golf ball is going, from the air — like the blimp. They would like to see the contour of the golf course, which TV is yet to catch up with that. But we’re working on that; that will come one day. The main thing I always hear about our coverage of golf is we show the competition, and that’s what people want to see.

...

What does it take to produce a golf tournament?

That’s a great question; I’ve never been asked that question before. I’ve always said golf is the hardest sport to do on television, because there’s more than one ball, nobody has numbers on their back and nobody ever stops playing. That’s what makes golf so much harder than every other sport to do on television. It might not look fast and kind of a little slow on television, but behind the scenes, there’s a lot of stuff going on.

How does producing golf differ from producing other sports?

Other sports, like football and basketball, when you go to commercial, they usually stop playing until you come back. In golf, you have to figure out when to go to commercial, what players play quickly, what players play slowly, how far it is from green to tee box … so, all of that comes into play. If you ever get behind on covering golf and you make the wrong moves, it’s like digging a hole with a front-end loader and filling it back in with a teaspoon: You can never catch up.

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2015/05/20/golf-producer-lance-barrow-golf-is-the-hardest-sport-to-do-on-television/

[iacas]

I agree. Simply the size of the field and the distance shots cover. That's why they show so much putting: they're in position and can mount cameras near the greens.