PGA Tour To Test New Broadcast Format That's Already Irking Players
You know those hard-to-watch interviews with San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich that take place during the middle of competition?
Well, the golf version of those could hit the PGA Tour soon, according to The Associated Press.
The PGA Tour plans to experiment with interviewing players in the middle of their rounds. No, not in between, say, the second and third round, but rather while a golfer is walking down the fairway on the 14th hole.
Unlike the NBA, which forces coaches to submit to interviews, the PGA Tour will simply request to talk to its golfers. If a player doesn’t want to partake in the midround interview, he won’t have to.
The interviews are not expected to take place during final rounds of events as the Tour is sensitive to the timing of the interviews.
These types of midround interviews commonly take place on the Champions Tour and the European Tour, and one European golfer isn’t a fan of them.
“I’ve been approached in Europe because they’ve done it for a couple of years,” McIlroy said. “And I’ve said, ‘No,’ every single time.”
2017 PGA Player of the Year Justin Thomas is known for chatting up opponents during rounds, but he sees these interviews as a distraction that would take away from his game.
“I’ve just been asked about it,” Thomas said. “I said, ‘No.’ It’s not me. I do a lot of self-talking. That’s mine and (caddie) Jimmy (Johnson)’s time, whether we’re talking about whatever, or even the next shot. For me, there’s no benefit. It’s only going to make me look worse.”
In addition to the NBA, other sports have included midgame interviews over the years.
In the NFL and college football, one head coach is usually interviewed as he heads to the locker room for halftime and the other coach is interviewed (off camera) as he comes back from halftime.
In MLB, managers and sometimes pitchers who aren’t throwing that day are interviewed from their dugouts either between innings or during games.
But those interviews in other sports are with either coaches or players who aren’t competing at that moment. LeBron James isn’t getting interviewed while sitting at the scorer’s table waiting to check into a game.
The PGA Tour seems to be seeking more exposure for its players, and for a virtually unknown player who rises up the leaderboard it could be a good thing.
Marc Leishman has experience with these types of interviews from playing on the Australian Tour, and he has some advice to the PGA Tour in order to make this experiment work out.
“If they do end up having them, my advice would be to have someone who has played on tour to do it, to be a little sensitive of the questions and the timing of the interview,” Leishman said.
“But anything where you can be more accessible to the viewers is a good thing. We want to bring more people to the game. It might be a way to give more insight to what we’re thinking at the time.”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
