This past weekend I watched some of the action on the LIV professional golf league tour, this particular tournament taking place in Adelaide, Australia. The 54 golfers on the 54-hole tourney...they're all 54 holes instead of the standard PGA 72-holes, hence the Roman numeral "LIV"...were largely recruited and paid millions just to jump over to the new league, funded by Saudi interests. I'm no golf purist and, even if I "should", don't care about the ongoing controversies between the old and new leagues: let 'em duke it out. No, I just wanted to watch an LIV event, which it turns out was easy enough. The first round was streamed live on YouTube and the second and third rounds broadcast on CW, which I loaded for free on Roku...the Gainesville CW version didn't carry the LIV. On one hand, I liked the fact that the coverage included most of the field of players while typical PGA coverage on the Golf Channel or major networks like CBS and NBC tend to only follow the leaders. That's fine, but I was still taken aback at how fast they switched from one golfer to the next...almost like a mass assembly line of brief takes...and most of them were just putting the ball. I saw very little of the Adelaide course and realized that showing the different courses in detail is one of the things that the PGA tour coverage is getting right. The announcers were very gung-ho promoting the LIV and their prized golfers...it got to be a bit overwhelming, as a matter of fact. And what's with the loud music on the putting greens, unless it's just the new league's way of saying that they're cooler than the PGA? I'm still going to follow LIV golf...next weekend they're playing in Singapore. But overall, in spite of my criticism that general PGA televised coverage is too narrow regarding most of the participants, I think I prefer their approach to the hack cheerleaders broadcasting on behalf of LIV and their cast of over-hyped stars...
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