Media Coverage of the US AM

[Chris Munoz]

I am disappointed of how the US AM is getting covered in the media.  First off, I think this the first time in a while that the US AM was on The Golf Channel during the week, before it was on ESPN.  Does anyone know why???  Second  I haven't seen any coverage in NEWSDAY, POST, or THE NEW YORK TIMES, of the US AM.  That is just nonsense.  Third, NBC is just showing 4 hours of coverage during the weekend.  What is up with the coverage.....

MUNI

[Patrick_Mucci]

Muni,

Both the Walker Cup and The US Amateur coverage have been disappointing.

Why the USGA scheduled the Walker Cup opposite the PGA is a mystery to me.

The PGA Tour gets the spotlight, the TV coverage and the USGA should have tried to avoid a scheduling conflict because amateur golf can't compete with the PGA tour and especially a Major.

[Robert_Walker]

I am sure there is a reason for the PGA scheduling the PGA Championship opposite the Walker Cup, but it is really annoying that the NY Times doesn't have any coverage. This is what happens when periodicals make non golf people their golf writers. Damon Hack is not a golf guy.
I was disappointed in Jimmie Rogers story on the Peskin photo. Several pros talked about the picture from a player's point of view.  It would have been a great chance to pay tribute to Peskin. He just died recently ,and it would have been appropriate to bring in a photographer to describe why it is perhaps the best golf picture ever made.

[John Keenan]

Overall I find Jimmie Rogers a disappointment.

I agree his "essay" on the Peskin/Hogan photo was weak. The players comments were good.

[JESII]

Does anyone know why???  

What is up with the coverage.....

MUNI

How many players in the field had you heard of? This includes the Walker Cup.

Of those you had heard of, how many are interesting stories? Not to you or I, but to a television audience that can be informed of the story prior so they have a reason to turn on the TV.

p.s. not to nit-pick, but I thin it's Jimmy Roberts. Didn't see the piece, but a collection of photography explanations as well as golfers might have been cool.

[Bill Gayne]

No Tiger = The minimally required media coverage.

As minimally required in the USGA exclusive contract with NBC to cover the USGA championships. If the USGA didn't negotiate and contractually require some coverage of events such as the US Am. it would never be seen on network TV.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Bill Gayne,

That's true.
The USGA's position of, "you take the Open, you take the others" is sound.

I was further disappointed by the minimal newspaper coverage monday morning, there was barely a paragraph devoted to the amateur.

This should be a lesson learned.
It's all about the PGA Tour and the golf courses THEY play.
And the media influence will trickle down to the local club level.

Narrow fairways, deep, lush rough, moving bunkers and the like will be a countering force to restorations.

[JohnV]

I was stuck in Erie on Sunday night at a hotel with no Golf Channel and ESPN even didn't put the Am results on the bottom line.  I didn't stay up to see if Sports Center covered it or not.

[Rick Shefchik]

As disappointing as the minimal coverage was, I found it even more disappointing that NBC was determined to make Dillon Daugherty's dead grandfather the single storyline. Obviously, NBC, too, believes the Am is a hard sell, so they exploited the schmaltziest angle they had for all it was worth.

I liked Daugherty, but by the end of the tournament I was silently rooting for Molinari to finish him off so we didn't have to go through the story about the tragic golf cart accident several more times.

Would that NBC had played up the golf course as the big story, which it was. Merion looked spectacular, and at least Gary Koch and Roger Maltbie seemed to appreciate it.

[rgkeller]

Needed Michelle Wie in the field.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

I find it hard to believe that the New York Times did not cover this event. They relied on Associated Press.

[Robert_Walker]

As I said earlier, this is waht happens when you have non-golf writers become golf writers. Damon Hack believes that the TOUR is golf. He probably does not even know the Amateur exists.

[JLahrman]

I disagree.  Damon Hack may be the biggest fan of the US Amateur in the world, but this is not a tournament that calls for a great deal of network coverage (although yes I do realize that NBC has been showing Arena Football all summer).  I don't follow the ams as much as I have in the past, but I don't think I'd heard of any of the quarterfinalists.

[Rick Shefchik]

I can explain how a newspaper can let its golf writer get his facts consistently wrong. No matter how big the newspaper, there are not enough staffers to have a fact-checker looking over the shoulder of every beat writer. It would be ideal if newspapers could afford to have that level of fact-checking, but the fact is beat writers are the ultimate -- and usually the only -- authorities in their field of expertise.

Maybe the guys back in the newsroom were watching the coverage and were lucky enough to catch the mistake. With the U.S. Am, that's extremely unlikely.

I was a TV critic for a metro newspaper for seven years, and no one else on the staff knew whether what I was writing in my column was right or wrong. That could be a problem on the (excedingly rare ) occasions when I made a mistake; at times it would have been nice to have someone on the desk catch the mistake, but I was basically on my own when it came to the facts on my beat.

It's the same for any beat writer, including a golf writer. If readers call the editors' attention to enough mistakes, the editors will eventualy find it necessary to make a beat change.

[Robert_Walker]

Rick augments my point. Large newspapers ought to be able to find golf writers that know about golf before they start covering the game for large papers.
I watched Cliff Brown go through a learning process at the Times, and when he finally got pretty good at covering golf, he was replaced by Hack.

[TEPaul]

"Dougherty, though, did have one believer. When he advanced to match play last week, Northwestern coach Pat Goss issued a prediction.

"I told Dillon, `Nobody will want to play you. You're a bulldog,'" Goss said. "I wasn't shocked. He's extremely tough in match play. He's got a short game that doesn't quit."

Basically, that was proven at the Amateur. Dougherty probably should've lost his semi-final match to J.C. Deacon of Canada. But what Dougherty did with his short game alone on holes #16, 17 and 18 was nothing short of otherworldy. What he did is what little kids dream about and pretend about when they're out their in the gloaming pretending they're playing a big national tournament. What Dougherty did on those last three holes is what little kids dream about---that is only if they have a very active imagination!