Paris 2024 Olympics: OBS Olympic Golf Broadcast failing the sport
2 August, 2024 - Cupar, Scotland: Viewers of the Olympic Golf Tournament in the United States will be treated to the usual standard of coverage by the Golf Channel, including familiar faces and voices such as Brad Faxon, Tom Abbot, Steve Sands, Grant Boone, Brandel Chamblee, Paige Mackenzie, and Rex Hoggard among others. Karen Stupples and John Wood are the on-course commentators.
For the rest of the world, including us here in the UK, what do we get? The commentary team features four voices, led by Lead commentator Duane Dell’oca, co-commentators Tony Johnstone, Alison Whitaker, and (apologies) someone called Louis - cannot find any details about him. With the exception of Dell’oca the team is outstanding, but the Olympic broadcast can and should deliver much more.
No on-course commentator
One of the most entertaining and informative roles within a golf broadcast is the on-course commentator, from Feherty, to Howard Clark, from Ken Brown, to Wayne Riley, and some of the more young, contemporary on-course commentators like Inci Mehmet and Iona Stephen. Yet, bizarrely the OBS have elected not to have one or even two on-course commentators to help add more information and colour to the broadcast.
No interviews
No interviews before, during or after the round. We never hear from the players, it is just golfers playing golf.
No in-vision leaderboard
FOX debuted the in-vision leaderboard in their US Open coverage 9, yes, NINE years ago, yet incredibly OBS have decided its not important to feature in their coverage of the Olympic golf.
Warner Bros Discovery Sports should sublicense Olympic Golf to Sky in the UK
One of the biggest complaints I have about the broadcast it is lacking a distinctly British feel to it, almost every other sport in Eurosport and Discovery+ coverage has tailored its coverage to a UK audience. Golf is missing that. I wouldn’t blame WBD, their coverage of the Olympics has been excellent, but to have different teams for 30+ sports is challenging.
So one suggestion would be to sublicense the golf tournaments to Sky Sports Golf, enabling them to cover the tournaments as they would with other events on the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, LPGA and the Majors.
Tony Johnstone and Alison Whitaker do work for Sky anyway, and they are excellent, and could be joined by Nick Dougherty, and Ewen Murray in commentary. On course you could have Wayne Riley and Inci Mehmet, with interviews by Henni Koyack, and they could have guest commentators and analysts, perhaps including 2016 Gold Medallist Justin Rose.
SHANK, by Matt Hooper
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