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Spend to improve Masters broadcast

If it’s a review of that show called the Masters, you must have. Year in, year out, the golf course generates all the drama any junkie could want. CBS seems to have overlooked this salient fact. The best telecast would clear the set of jugglers and acrobats and let the story tell itself. While much improved, Sir Nick Faldo still hasn’t mastered the golf commentator’s art of sounding authoritative while remarking endlessly on the obvious. (He could take some coaching from his colleague Ian Baker-Finch, who holds a Ph.D.) Faldo’s primary role appears to be that of green-jacketed icon for the rest of the cast to fawn over. David Feherty wasn’t half the player Faldo was, but he’s more than twice as clever at delivering the trenchant line. CBS should cast him in the role the BBC has given Peter Alliss. It could then plant Jim Nantz, who has a gift for narrative, for sizing up the scene and keeping the viewer in the picture in the play-by-play chair with Feherty at his side.

Sack the court jesters and spare us the album of artsy, out-of-focus azalea shots every year. Pour the savings into a director and camera men who know how to show the ball rolling to a stop – not in an empty sea of green, but in relation to the flag stick. The show would then resolve itself in the greatest players punching and counter-punching on a great golf course. What a concept! We witnessed the Bubbafication of Augusta National Golf Club (and of golf?). For a subplot, we had the cocky kid gunslinger from Texas. If you can’t tell that story without tripping over your laces, you might consider selling shoes for a living.

Ed Fowler

Durango



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