The view from here

The big sports story of last weekend was Tom Watson leading the Open Championship (British Open) at 59 years young for most of the weekend. It was very inspiring to see a man, 2-months shy of his 60 birthday, contenting in the world’s oldest major championship. But as Dom Amore wrote in Sunday’s Hartford Courant ”To be really good when you’re old, you have to have been great when you were young”: Tom is a 5-time Open Championship winner, 1977 at Turnberry (site of this year’s championship) 3 Senior British Open tittles including the 2003 Senior Open at Turnberry. So he knows this course and how to play in windy conditions, which you need to play links golf. I don’t think Tom chocked in the end, Stewart Cink won the tournament in a 4-hole playoff. I think Tom got tired in the end, his par putt on the 72nd green to win came up just short and in the playoff he don’t drive it into the fairway like he did the whole week. Tom’s motivation was not just to win his sixth Open Championship but also make the cut and play late on the weekend because if he didn’t he would have been working for ABC.

Let’s talk about the TV coverage, like I said last week; this was TNT’s last year of Thursday and Friday coverage of the Open. For visuals ABC and TNT were limited to the BBC feed. Let’s talk about the announcers, TNT was not bad but not good, Ernie Johnson is great as host of TNT’s NBA coverage but golf is not his game. Ian Baker-Finch and Terry Gannon were the best of the bunch, they both had the enthusiasm that I like and made the telecast enjoyable. ABC weekend coverage was good in spots. Mike Tirco is the best play-by-play man in the business in any sport, bar none. Curtis Strange was very annoying and talked way too much. Tom Weiskopf was the new kid on the block and my first impression was that he was no good, he could not talk very well, but once he we got to golf he gave very good insight to what was going on. Tirco’s partner in the booth was Paul Azinger, who I did not like at all, was just bad. On the golf course walking with the players were Andy North and Judy Rankin. I think they are the two best on the course commentators in the business. Most media critics love BBC’s Peter Alliss, who showed up for an hour or so each day. Don’t get me wrong I love the British, but Mr. Alliss is 78 years old and he mumbled a lot. I could not understand a word he was saying. I also think Rich Reilly was excellent; I liked it when he sat in with Gannon on Saturday and just his obvious joy while watching Watson.

The non-sports story of the weekend was the death of newsman Walter Cronkite at the age of 92. “Uncle” Walter was the anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. I don’t remember Mr. Cronkite but from what I saw in the last few days, I was very impressed. He was a newsman’s newsman; I mean he was a reporter first who happened to be an anchor. CNN’s Larry King Live replayed an interview with Walter from many years ago. We can lean a lot about covering the news from Mr. Cronkite. Goodbye “Uncle” Walter, there will never be any one like you.

This Weekend

The big event Saturday is the WNBA All-Star at the Morgan Sun at 3:30 on ABC. This is the best of the best of women’s basketball and all the big names will be there like Bird and Taurasi. The best part is that I will be there as well.

Sunday’s big event is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Brickyard 400 at Indy. I still can’t believe this is the 16th running of this event. It really has become one of NASCAR’s biggest races.

As Uncle Water would say,” That’s the way it is.”

Talk to you all next week.

Jamie Lazaroff