Archive for the 'Great Golf Stories' Category

Unless you have been on the inside of a TV network's coverage during a PGA Tour or LPGA Tour event and are familiar with their manic methods of bringing golf to your big screen TV, you would have no way of knowing just how crazy things can be behind the scenes. Watching a golf telecast on TV you would never know that people are screaming orders and yelling for camera angles, swearing like sailors on a troop ship, cursing spotters that miss a call and even yelling at each other back in the production trailer.

TV Golf Needs Spotters

While spotters are invisible to most TV people (who will cross the street to avoid one) they play an important role in the smooth operation of a network golf show. If they do their jobs correctly they are never seen or heard unless called upon and never, ever, under penalty of death, do they speak to a player unless the player speaks to them. Their role in the vast machine that brings the PGA Tour to your television each week is under-appreciated and under-paid and is about to become extinct due to technology like Shot Link. This is why it is time to tell their story. (more…)

TV Golf Credentials To Remember Them By

These are just a few of the many events I have been lucky to be a part of as an on-course TV Golf spotter during a long love affair with the game of golf, both as a regular player (strictly amateur now with a 12 hndcp) who loves to travel the world in pursuit of a good course and as a spectator at PGA Tour events. I have been fortunate to have attended all of golf's major championships and to have worked as an on-course spotter for all but one of them (The Masters Tournament - where Chuck Will of CBS had me at the top of his list until Lance Barrow overthrew the "Ayatollah" of CBS, Frank Chirkinian).

It Helps To Work In The Golf Business

Over the last 20 years between my regular jobs in golf travel and hospitality in Arizona. I have walked (and ran) inside the ropes at both regular PGA Tour events and what they used to call "silly"-season events like the Skins Game (1st one, Desert Highlands, 1983), Desert Scramble (to promote the opening of Desert Mountain Golf Club in N. Scottsdale, Diners Club Matches at PGA West and the first two Anderson Consulting events played in my hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona at the Grayhawk Golf Club. (more…)

Real Fame Is For Guys Like Joe The Plumber

In the literal world there would be little doubt that, while pretty cool, this little piece of personal golf history would not count as my fifteen minutes of fame, something Andy Warhol predicted we would all experience at some point in our lives. But forgive me if I don't pay much attention to attaining real fame for myself, I could care less about that, having no desire to someday, out of the blue, gain instant celebrity - like what happened with Joe The Plumber. (as of this writing we are only 15 days from the 2008 presidential election between Senator John McCain(Rep) and his rival Senator Barrack Obama(Dem) who was responsible for the Joe The Plumber media frenzy. One of my best buddies is a plumber but geez, enough already.

British Open Championship Here I Come

This particular golf experience that I am about to tell you about had the potential of attaining a perfect 10 on Golftrekker's golf trip meter from the moment I stepped off the plane in Edinburgh, Scotland. After all, I was there not only to play the Old Course at St. Andrews for the first time, but to also work as an on-course spotter for abc sports for all four rounds of the 121st Open Championship at Muirfield. At the time I was working for the world-famous John Jacobs' Golf Schools and I had scheduled a round of golf and lunch with the legendary superstar teacher John Jacobs himself. From there on it totally blew away everything I had ever accomplished in my life (to that point) as a golfer. It was to become THE golf experience in a life of nearly 35 years in golf. (more…)