British Open Golf 2011: Intriguing Storylines Obscured by Lousy TV Coverage

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There was some pretty cool stuff happening early on at the 2011 British Open. In particular, Mark Calcavecchi came out looking like the man that won the Claret Jug in 1989, Fredrik Jacobson showed he still had a good feeling for Royal St. George’s, and Thomas Bjørn showed that his performance at the 2003 British Open was no fluke.

Shoot, it would have been just great to watch these storylines develop live. But alas, over two hours of British Open action went by with no television coverage whatsoever. Despite the fact things got going around 1:30 am ET, ESPN’s TV coverage didn’t start until 4:00 am.

If I had to guess, there are two reasons why ESPN decided to wait to bring viewers live images from Royal St. George’s until well after the tournament was underway. One is that notables like Rory McIlroy and Luke Donald weren’t due to tee off until after the 4:00 am hour. But more importantly, the folks at ESPN must have crunched the numbers and figured out that most Americans were probably going to be asleep anyway.

This is true, but those of us on the West Coast represent a whole ‘nother story. For us, 1:30 in the morning on the East Coast is 10:30 at night, which is as good a time as any to hunker down and watch some television. And because I’m a sucker for golf, I have to say that I would have enjoyed watching a bit of the British Open before letting my DVR take care of the rest.

Instead, all I could do was go on the internet and watch numbers flash across a digital leaderboard.

In case you’ve never had the pleasure, take my word for it that it’s not very exciting. Despite the fact the numbers were telling me that Calcavecchia was playing way too well for a 51-year-old, it would have been nice to see it with my own two eyes.

Oh well. Maybe Calcavecchia can do it again next year. But even if he does, me seeing it depends entirely on ESPN.

Nudge nudge, wink wink.

-Zachary D. Rymer

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