Worst Tournament Coverage Ever

The tournament commentary this year is the worst in history. Although they’re off camera the majority of the time, I see the puffed up chests as they talk over the sounds of the course, trying to out-Augusta each other, pontificating over the true poetry of the tournament—the sounds of the birds of Raes Creek, Raes herself, wind through the magnolias and pines, the sounds of the golfers’ footsteps on the greens, the handling of the clubs, the silence of the gallery, the music of man and nature inside this bubble.

I remember the sound of Jack’s bare foot entering the water on 15 when he chose to play it as it lay. The best photographers in sports captured the arc of water with a white sphere of hope outdistancing it on an afternoon in April of 1984, the gasp of the gallery heard round the world. These buffoons would have stolen the magic of the moment, so in love with themselves that they can’t give the course a moment to speak for itself. It whispers, and back when the gallery observed protocol, golf claps only, Augusta National and the spirits of Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts breathed through the waters of the creek and the birds and breeze of the trees above oceans of azaleas dotted with dogwood islands waving to camellias in the distance, and we could hear all of it in our living rooms one magical week in April.

Now, we’re subjected to frat boy shouts and commentary referring to the holes by name instead of number in some off-camera preening peacock contest.

I miss the days when Jim Nantz was the solitary voice speaking during the tournament, when the coverage was limited. The magic still breathes in the course, but a cacophony of self-important voices talk over most of it these days. It isn’t what it used to be.