Q&A: NBC Sports’ Tommy Roy on producing the Presidents Cup broadcast

This year’s Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow Club will mark Adam Scott’s 10th consecutive appearance in the biennial event. He won’t be the most-experienced man on the grounds at Quail Hollow, however. Tommy Roy, the lead golf producer for NBC Sports, has been in the chair for every Presidents Cup since 2000. It is his duty to capture not just the important shots, but also the emotions that are inherent with international team events. PGATOUR.COM recently sat down with Roy to understand how he plans on transporting the passion in Charlotte, North Carolina, to the fans watching on TV. (Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.) PGATOUR.COM: What is different about broadcasting team match play as opposed to individual stroke play? TOMMY ROY: You’re playing for a team, for your captain, for your country, and because of that the pressure is ratcheted up way more than a stroke play event where you’re just playing for yourself. Let’s compare it to a major, where, if you are in contention you’re playing pretty good golf. So when the pressure is on, you’re probably handling it just fine. But in something like the Presidents Cup, the pressure is as great or even greater than a major, but you may not have your best game because you’ve been put on this team from play that may have happened earlier in the year. And so what tends to happen is the pressure really makes a difference. … You can’t hide. And so for us, it’s not about dissecting a golf swing or something like that. It’s about capturing the emotion because the emotions are so great. The emotion of the player himself, the emotion of the fans around, the emotion of the captains and the rest of the teammates. So our coverage is designed to do that as opposed to what you would typically do on a stroke-play event. PGATOUR.COM: So how do you do that? You’ve got all these people inside the ropes. How do you capture that team aspect of it? ROY: Well, the way we frame our shots. You’ll notice if somebody’s putting for birdie in a stroke-play event, it’ll just be that guy and the (hole). In match play, we frame to include the opponent as well. So, it’s the guy who’s putting and his opponent or it could be the guy who’s putting and his teammate. We frame to include that in the shot. And then the other thing is when we cut to a reaction shot, we typically, especially if it’s a player from the home team who’s done something, we include the fans in the background. It’s not just a tight shot of the guy. It’s all the fans in the background reacting. It’s different the way it’s directed to include the fans and the players and their teammates, so that the people at home can understand what’s going on. PGATOUR.COM: How long did it take you to learn all of this? You’ve done the Ryder Cup since 1993 and the Presidents Cup since 2000. How have you learned over the years? ROY: The first Ryder Cup we did in 1993 was over there and we learned a lot. We learned how to cover it, but also the technical aspect of how everything works and we’ve grown every year. I’d say by ‘95, we had our act together on how to cover the team, match play and capture everything, but there are nuances and you do learn all the time how to improve. It is clearly about capturing the emotion, period. To have an (extreme slow-mo camera) where we show contact of the ball and the club face is not really necessary in something like this, but to have a super slow-mo to capture the guy’s reaction shot after he has done something incredible is more important. PGATOUR.COM: Was there a moment that you go back to in a team event, especially the Presidents Cup, that you walked away from feeling like we got it, we got the perfect moment right here? ROY: Yeah, I think when it was in San Francisco and Tiger (Woods) and (Steve) Stricker were teammates and they’re on a par 5 and Tiger hit this incredible shot in there and he twirled the club right after impact. It was a bullet right at the flag. We had a camera on Fred Couples, who was the boss of the team and he’s imitating him with the club twirl. So we added all those replays and it was really well done. PGATOUR.COM: The club twirl has survived the test of time. With that said, are there any moments… ROY: One other thing I would say that’s different than covering stroke play is in stroke play, you can jump around, hole-to-hole, player-to-player, and keep track of the story. Whereas in match play, because it’s mano a mano, we can’t take one shot from one guy in his group and then go to another hole, take a shot from that guy and then go to another hole and take a putt from somebody else. You have to cover both guys hitting, so that you go back-to-back within the same match. Sometimes that slows things down a little bit, but it’s crucial for the people at home to understand what’s happening here because there’s a lot of non-golf fans who are watching and you need to produce it so they understand what’s happening. PGATOUR.COM: How does the speed change going from the team days to the individual singles matches on Sunday? ROY: It really ratchets up because then you’ve got 12 matches out there. And of course, all basically at the same time. Once they all get out there and it’s rocking and rolling, it is the most frenetic that our truck is the entire year – Sunday of the Presidents Cup or Sunday of the Ryder Cup. PGATOUR.COM: Is frenetic a good thing or a bad thing? ROY: It’s pretty good TV because there’s great stuff happening all the time on the screen. What’s going to be so cool about Charlotte is that supposedly they’ve sold 50,000 tickets a day. To have that many fans on the course at one time, around just a few matches, it’s going to be electric and the energy, the cheers, the roars, it’ll be great TV. “It’s the most frenetic that our truck is the entire year – Sunday of the Presidents Cup.” – Tommy Roy, NBC Sports lead golf producer PGATOUR.COM: There are a lot of unique things going into this Presidents Cup that have been highlighted, such as the Green Mile being moved up to 13-15. How does the routing affect what you do? ROY: I applaud what the PGA TOUR has done in changing the routing so that we get these great holes on the air for sure. As we know in match play, it may end early. You definitely wouldn’t want to have the coolest hole on the entire golf course be the 18th in a match-play situation. They’ve done a great job changing the routing so that we’ll be able to get these iconic holes on the air. PGATOUR.COM: How do you want to show these specific holes, in particular with the lake, the aesthetics of that? How can you show the uniqueness of the course on this type of broadcast? ROY: We have a drone and an airplane. I think we’ll get some very unique angles of this course, which will be great. I really love this golf course and it will be great for match play because there’s risk-reward holes, drivable par 4s and where the water comes into play, anything can happen. There’s not a boring hole on this entire golf course. Every single one of them is unique and exciting, which will really be accentuated under match-play conditions. PGATOUR.COM: What might be new to the broadcast for this Presidents Cup? ROY: The one thing we got new is we’ve got Captain’s cams. In both of the golf carts, for Davis Love III and Trevor Immelman, we will be mounting (point-of-view) cameras pointing at their seats. What typically happens is we will do an interview on the first tee after the first match tees off with both captains. And then we want to do an interview at the very end of the day. In between, there are a lot of times where one of the sides will get off to a fast start and you want to get a shot of that captain, who’s done such a good job with the selection of the picks that day and the pairings. And then it’s like, where is he? Then you’re trying to find them because he’s in a golf cart racing around the golf course and it’s not easy to spot these guys from our fixed camera location. By having these captain cams, I’ll know where they are at all times. PGATOUR.COM: What have been some of the innovations that have enhanced your coverage of these international team events? ROY: Technology wise, the miniaturization of all the equipment allows us to have more of it. More cameras, more angles, more replays of exciting moments. In the old days, a camera cable was a full inch around. That’s how big it was when I first started. It would take them four days, five days to just put the cables out on six holes. Nowadays, we can cable an entire golf course in basically a day. We have many more cameras and many more microphones . And audio is a huge part of this, particularly on holes where the water’s in play. To be able to hear the splash sound just accentuates a moment all that much more, so I’m grateful that experts in the technological side of our business have been able to do what they’ve done. PGATOUR.COM: Is there a player in your history of covering these team events that got your heart pumping or that you were always focused on making sure that was captured? ROY: Well, obviously Tiger. Every time he played, he brought such passion and I see that now, by the way, in Justin Thomas, the way he played up in New Jersey. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t just hit good shots. He hits great shots in these team atmospheres for whatever reason. That just seems to be in his DNA. We’re all over that and obviously Spieth, what he’s done, getting in trouble and then hitting these miraculous shots out of trouble. That’s all great stuff. Sangmoon Bae, when we were in Korea (for the 2015 Presidents Cup) and it all came down to him and it was a lot of pressure and he stepped up and performed down the stretch and then ultimately got beat. He was carrying his team while in his home country and it was pretty incredible to watch. The best of all though, was (Ernie) Els in South Africa. When it came down to that playoff (with Tiger Woods to break a tie in the 2003 Presidents Cup), I don’t think there has ever been as much pressure on a player in golf in any event as when the whole thing was riding on him. And he’s making these putts that were incredible, very difficult breaking putts, sloping, breaking putts, and he was making them and Tiger was answering them. You kind of felt like Tiger was going to answer those. It was Els having to make these things with the entire Presidents Cup in his home country on him. And he came through, shot after shot, putt after putt until finally, it was declared a tie. That was by far the most incredible golf I’ve seen played in one of these events. It came down to just the two of them in the playoff to determine it because that was the rule, but the great thing was not just capturing their exploits, but capturing all their teammates and the fans’ reactions to what was going on because that’s part of it, that’s part of what ratchets up the drama on this is watching their teammates, who’ve completed their matches and they’re now following the final couple of matches out on the golf course, capturing their emotions before and after each one of these shots is struck. That’s another part of it.

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