Broadcasting Golf – Sit Back and Relax

Watching a golf tournament on your TV or tablet is easy. Sit back in your favourite chair or couch and push a button. Suddenly you are in the middle of a lush green fairway along with your favourite player discussing club selection. The drives, putts and comments from ex-players are all there. Did you ever wonder exactly how and who is responsible for the production of it all?

Production Team

There are many people working behind the scenes to bring you those images. The directors, producers and their assistants put it all together along with a support team of hundreds. The technicians, camera operators and IT personnel all support the Director in making the coverage possible. Working alongside the team, in a supporting role, are the volunteers, runners, and the food and beverage employees. Broadcasting golf is a challenge. It’s different than covering a boxing match or a basketball game, where you are mostly inside in a media room or the basement of an arena. Since the event is outdoors the elements come into play.

Preparation

Months before the tournament starts there is a planning survey. Items are discussed such as where the TV compound will be located, how many production trailers will be needed and where will they park them. Then there is a question about the staff. How to safely transport them back and forth from the media hotels to the compound. Security is discussed and planned. The golf cart allowance is very important. Normally courses don’t allow many on the course during the tournament. Television needs them for transporting the technicians and commentators, carrying heavy camera equipment and running back and forth to the media centre for player interviews. You will see them parked around the TV compound or the Media Centre. A piece of tape will be attached to the front of the cart with names written down such as Director, Producer, Commentator, A1 audio, Camera #1, and so on.

Set-Up

Most of the staff arrive the week before the tournament starts. The riggers and cable technicians will lay the fibre cables from each hole back to the production trucks. This fibre will carry all the camera signals where the director will mix them all at his discretion. What he selects is what you will see. The computer and graphics people start putting together hole graphics and scoring information. The Radio Frequency (RF) technicians erect towers for all the radio signals and RF cameras. The week turns into a 24 hour a day operation and all of it must be in place by that Monday of tournament week. That’s the day when the players arrive and the interviews are recorded.

Media

The Radio, Print and Internet people usually work in the Media Centre. Most of the time it’s a large canvas tent with large air vents piped in for air conditioning. They erect it just off the 18th green. One of the reasons it is placed there is to make it easier for the players to get to. This is where the daily interviews take place. When completed the player will break off and do a ‘one on one’ with other broadcasters. If you work in Radio you will be supplied with your own special booth to broadcast from. The writers and internet people have desks assigned to them along with WiFi and internet connections.

Shuttle

The broadcasters are there from 6 am till an hour after play usually. They are shuttled to and from the course by media busses. This ride can be 15 minutes or sometimes over an hour if the course is remote and the nearest hotel is 30 miles away.

Compound

The TV compound area is small and cramped. It consists of the production trucks, office trailers, and satellite uplink trucks. It is located out of sight, usually as far away from the clubhouse as possible. The trailers are approximately 60 feet long and 10 feet wide placed side by side. The production trucks are larger and expand horizontally for more inside space. The noisy AC power generators and satellite uplink trucks fill up the remaining spaces. At some courses, the area is paved, while others are not. There you might find a field of grass and dirt. The truck drivers prefer paved because the trucks can be more easily levelled. In the dirt, and with a lot of rain, they can easily sink and need to be re-levelled. Surrounding the compound will be a wire fence. This is to make sure no one is inside that shouldn’t be. The credentials and badges are checked by security at the entrance. If you don’t have a credential, you don’t get in.

Adapt

Working conditions can be very harsh in these remote areas. Usually, during the week it will rain, turning the compound into a sea of mud.  All you can do is stay in your trailer, or the production truck, and keep dry. When it does rain, most of the fibre cables that are run back to the trucks can be buried in water and mud. If the rain is steady large trucks filled with hay are brought in. They spread the hay around which helps the technicians get to buried cables and dry them off best they can.

Facilities

The hay also makes it easier for the golf carts and walking back and forth to the portable latrines. These are usually green or blue in colour and are lined up side by side on wooden pelts. They are cleaned each day and are usually located not too far from the large outdoor tent that supplies food for the crew.

During meal breaks, you go to the tent and stand in line. Most everyone eats there, but some might be still on the air. Those lucky individuals bring their meals back to their work station and carry on. The food is not bad considering where it is being prepared and the number of people serviced. The smell of disinfectant can be off-putting, but you get used to it.

Global

Then its back into the production truck to edit that day’s golf highlights for the next days broadcast. Because of the time differences, the foreign broadcasters work far into the night transmitting highlights back home. They will use the Satelite truck for their feed or nowadays its all digital and done mostly on fibre lines with lots of bandwidth.

Tidy-Up, Repeat

Sunday afternoon, when the tournament ends, it’s usually dark. The cameramen break down their area and store away their gear. The technical equipment for the trucks are packed and stowed away and the cable pullers reclaim the fibre from the course.  Working in the dark the compound is stripped and vacated. Everyone heads to airports to either fly home for clean clothes or fly directly to the next venue. The production trucks are driven off into the darkness to the next venue leaving the rented office trailers remaining for pickup the next day. The TV compound is turned into an empty dirt lot, leaving the birds and squirrels to reclaim it.  All this work to bring excitement and drama to you in your living room.

So sit back, relax, push that button and watch this great game called golf.