IN these torrid times, the one thing that unites the people of this birling clump of space rock known as Planet Earth is moaning, grumbling and harrumphing. Take the BBC’s coverage of the US PGA Championship for instance.
By all miserable accounts and whimpering insistences, folk would have you believe you were watching some awkward marriage of clanking Victorian mechanical technology and primitive valve electronics as the action from Quail Hollow was presented to the masses with the same kind of antiquated production values that would’ve made the British Pathe newsreels look like a thrusting exercise in bold, scientific advance.
In this best-of-everything era, of course, the button-punching, high maintenance consumers, who evidently possess the same sense of unhinged entitlement that used to be the reserve of insane Roman emperors, were left utterly appalled by the footage.
Okay, so it didn’t have the high-definition razzmatazz or the gee-whiz gadgetry, gizmos and glitz of Sky’s bells and whistles approach but at least it was on in some form.
Given the late contract wrangles that led to the BBC getting a hasty one-year deal for the championship only a month ago, that was slightly better than the alternative of not seeing it at all.
It was almost a make do and mend approach. For all those pious, hark-at-me, online crusaders who apparently took a noble stand and stopped watching after an hour or so of Peter Alliss’ hoary whimsy, then fair enough.
Call me as simple and as old-fashioned as a stovepipe hat but this scribe has never been particularly bothered about HD here, super slo-mo there or Butch bloomin’ Harmon everywhere. I was quite content just to watch the golf. Presumably, a few others out there were too.
It will be back to broadcasting business as usual this week, though, as the Solheim Cup between the USA and Europe gets underway at Des Moines and on Sky tele.
It’s the showpiece occasion for women’s golf but it’s a gulf that is in sharp focus too. If ever Team Europe needed a victory in this transatlantic tussle, then it’s now.
Unless you have been cocooned in an underground crypt for the past few weeks then you will probably be aware that the Ladies European Tour (LET) is in a fairly parlous state.
The recent news that the tour’s embattled chief executive, Ivan Khodabakhsh, had stepped down only added to the tumult of an already turbulent campaign which has been ravaged by the cancellation of seven events.
While the majority of the members of this week’s European team ply their trade on the lucrative LPGA Tour, the chaos at the LET continues to provide a sobering backdrop to affairs. A victory on US soil – just a second since the event was first staged in 1990 – would provide a timely tonic in this period of desperate apprehension.
There has been talk that the LPGA Tour could come to the rescue and make the LET a feeder circuit and develop some direct stepping stone to the riches on offer on the US-based tour. Equally, some stronger ties with the men’s European Tour could be of significant benefit.
For the past couple of years, the European Tour and the LET have collaborated closely and have staged an event in Morocco on two separate courses at the same time while the Ladies Scottish Open is now held at the same venue as the men’s tournament.
At the moment, though, it seems the LET has been left floundering on its own. For all the talk the major power brokers of golf make about co-existing and joined-up thinking, there seems to be a shrugging indifference to the LET’s plight.
The wider media coverage, too, has been modest. It’s all very well rattling the sabres and shoogling the pitch forks about, say, the easy targets of male-only clubs, but where is the concern over the dire straits into which Europe’s premier circuit for women golfers has been plunged?
The good ladies of Europe will be in the spotlight this week. What the future holds, though, remains shrouded in uncertainty.
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