How do you produce live golf in the age of COVID-19? It’s complicated. Sean McManus, Chairman of CBS Sports, said the network will use roughly half its normal on-site personnel, including Jim Nantz with a robotic camera instead of Nick Faldo, who will be in Orlando with Frank Nobillo. Staff in New York and Los Angeles will also be contributing. “It’s one of the great challenges that I’ve ever seen in my 35 years,� Nantz said. “This is the most complicated production plan I’ve ever been involved in,� McManus added. Golf was already the hardest sport to produce. Now it’s exponentially harder, but the network is embarking on an 11-week run of coverage in which they’re figuring it out on the fly. This week’s show has been more than two months in the making, McManus said. Among the never-before-attempted features will be a mid-round confession cam, in a tent, featuring a robotic camera and a single question on a cue card for players to (hopefully) answer as they play through. Necessity is the mother of invention, McManus said, and with no fans and no roars, it was time to explore new audio sources. The broadcast will acknowledge current events – the pandemic, the ongoing protests for racial justice – but provide much-needed counterprogramming. “I think our nation maybe needs a bit of a distraction,� McManus said. Nantz called this week “an opportunity for the TOUR to create a wider fan base than it’s ever had before.� FedExCup No. 2 Justin Thomas echoed that sentiment. Ryan Palmer, a member at Colonial Country Club, said, “We need live golf. America needs it. We need live sports. I think this week is going to be a very special, huge week for the sporting world.� We need it because we have had almost nothing but sports rebroadcasts and “The Great British Baking Show� and far too much terrible news to watch for nearly three months. The Schwab will pull in golf fans, yes, but also sports fans and anyone just looking for something different. “I think we’ve all exhausted every one of our favorite shows,� said Brandel Chamblee, the Golf Channel analyst, who will also ramp back up this week. “By now, we’ve done everything there is to do around the house. I think everybody’s honey-do lists are checked off and completed. “Sporting events bring us together in a way nothing else does,� he added. “It gives us something somewhat trivial to talk about, but entertaining nonetheless, and allows all of us to have loyalty. It’s not life or death. It’s raw entertainment, but in it, you know, there’s inspiration. So it just galvanizes us. … I expect the ratings to be colossally high.� Indeed, it’s almost hard to overstate the importance of this Return to Golf. We’ve missed the percussive thwap and eye-popping parabola of a Rory McIlroy drive. We’ve missed the terrible tension of a jam-packed leaderboard on a late Sunday afternoon. Heck, we’ve even missed the “mashed potatoes� guy. (OK, maybe not so much him.) Scientifically, what we’ve been missing is mirror neurons, which are what happen when we watch golf, listen to a concert, or even read a novel. To the extent that we’re familiar with an activity, some percentage of our premotor cortex kicks in even as we observe it. Simply put, as Rory sizes up a putt to win on a steamy day in Texas, our palms, too, are sweating. Sports bring us together? Oh, yeah, they do – on an empathic level. “There’s the empathy of almost being in the mind of the athlete,� said UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, an expert on mirror neurons, “and then there’s sharing that empathy with other people watching that athlete – we’ve been missing that big-time. It will be nice to get that back.� We’ve also been missing the element of surprise; fans like watching talent, yes, but also want to be surprised by luck – a crazy bounce, for example, to give the underdogs and/or less skilled a chance. Iacoboni calls it the you-never-know-what-is-going-to-happen factor. Meanwhile, real life goes on, and continues to surprise us all. “I’m 61 years old,� Nantz said, when asked about current events, “and I consider this to be perhaps the most important time in history in my lifetime. We just have to get this opportunity right. We can’t let this moment pass without real and meaningful progress when it comes to equality, diversity, justice, love and empathy, and I hope to express that at the top. “… I think the golf TOUR being back in action,� he added, “it comes at a very important time in our nation’s history. It’s a chance to get people to actually watch something together, root together, unify together, and I hope that that can be achieved.�
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