Golf broadcasters, before Sunday, seemed almost resigned recently: Even when Tiger Woods played well enough to show up on-air on Sundays, they'd seem kind of silly hyping him as if he were still a golfing god when he wasn't playing that well.
By Eric P. Mull, US Presswire
Tiger Woods walks off the 18th green after winning the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club on Sunday.
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But Sunday, CBS genuflected when Woods made a 50-foot chip on the 16th hole at the Memorial that sent him to victory.
"That was incredible!" gasped reporter David Feherty. "Does that remind you of anyone?"
As Woods flashed the fist pump that used to define TV golf replays before it largely disappeared, analyst Nick Faldo noted: "We haven't seen that reaction for years."
Jack Nicklaus, dropping by the TV booth at a tournament he hosts, said: "That was one of the most incredible shots you'll ever see."
Tiger Is Back, suggested lead announcer Jim Nantz a minute later: "This is the one moment people have been waiting for for three years."
And it's not just that everybody was caught up in that moment. Woods' win had a lucky theatrical touch: Viewers saw him congratulated by Nicklaus for his 73rd win — tying Nicklaus' career total. Seemed almost scripted.
After time to cool off during a few commercials — including Woods in a TV commercial (for Nike) that represented another sort of Woods comeback — Faldo said Woods is "obviously now back on top of everything."
Nantz, after recalling Woods' pitch-in as "a shot absolutely beyond description" addressed the potential monumentalism: "Is Tiger back? He certainly looked like it big-time today."
Nobody could blame golf's TV outlets for writhing in ecstasy at the thought of resurrecting the 50%-plus ratings spikes that came when Woods bestrode the golf universe.
But, seriously, is that what we witnessed? "I think this is a turning point," Faldo said in a phone interview after the broadcast. Now, he says, Woods has "go-to" shots that he can count on when there's "a gun to you head" and one "you'd trust your life on. … He's tried some weird and wonderful moves in the past year that we've all cringed at. But this has been the best week Tiger has had in 2½ years."
ESPN recruit: Once again, an NFL TV gig follows Dancing With the Stars success. ESPN, says spokesman Mike Soltys, will announce today that it's adding Jason Taylor as an NFL analyst. Taylor retired in December after 15 NFL seasons that included 139.5 sacks, six Pro Bowls— and a runner-up performance on ABC's Dancing in 2008 that included a spicy paso doble to the theme of Monday NightFootball.
Taylor will appear on various shows including NFL Live and Sunday and Monday pregame shows as he joins about 25 other former NFL players or coaches at ESPN.
Spice rack:Charissa Thompson today takes over for Michelle Beadle as a co-host on ESPN2's SportsNation (5 p.m. ET), a bouncy talk show Beadle leveraged into a move to NBC for sports and show biz shows.
A former sideline reporter, Thompson says "of course I joke with Beadle that there'll be bumper stickers, 'We hate you, We want Michelle back.' … But if I worried about what people thought of me, I might not still be in the business."…
TBS' MLB analyst DavidWells, noting players in "great physical shape" getting injured this season, said he played it safe when he pitched: "That's why I played big, you can't pull fat." …
The New Yorker magazine has long reprinted other publications' corrections — usually when mistakes were whoppers. But its June 4-11 edition corrects a whopper of its own: It reported that ESPN's Mel Kiper correctly predicted only 22% of the players picked in the first round of this year's NFL draft — Kiper picked 81%. If you've even heard of Kiper, you'd figure he'd predict more than 22% of the first-rounders.
TV school: The NFL, says spokesman Dan Masonson, will announce today a sort of grad school for its annual Broadcast Boot Camp. The seminar, meant to help current and former NFL players learn TV skills, will be hosted by CBS' James Brown from June 18 to 21 at NFL Films in Mount Laurel, N.J. But this year it will include three returnees — ex-NFL players Adam Archuleta, John Fina and Michael Young— who will participate in a new advanced program. They're likely to face grueling two-a-days during which they have to keep reading teleprompters no matter how much melting pancake makeup is dripping into their eyes. The NFL says that of the 105 boot campers since the seminars started in 2007, 44 went on to broadcasting jobs.
Running numbers: Even with small ratings, big markets don't always matter that much. NBC's coverage of the big-market Los Angeles-New Jersey NHL Stanley Cup Final Game 2 on Saturday drew a 2.2 overnight, which translates to 2.2% of households in the 56 urban markets measured for overnights. That's down 12% from Game 2 in last year's Boston-Vancouver Stanley Cup Final. This year's Game 1 was also down compared to last year's … TNT's small-market San Antonio-Oklahoma City NBA Western Conference Finals Game 4 Saturday drew a 4.1 overnight. That's down 33% from TNT's comparable coverage of a Chicago-Miami playoff game last year as TNT's Spurs-Thunder series overall trails Chicago-Miami last year by 33%. But TNT is still on track for its second-highest-rated NBA playoffs in 28 years, with this year's overall ratings trailing only last year's.
On tap:MLB Network's amateur draft coverage on Monday, starting at 6 p.m. ET, will include footage from 22 MLB team draft rooms. … Sirius XM Radio's Jim Duquette, a former New York Mets general manager, today will donate a kidney to his daughter Lindsey, 10. She has a rare kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGC).
Follow Hiestand on Twitter: @hiestandusat
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