Looking Forward To More TV Golf Coverage

Looking Forward To More TV Golf Coverage

It is a good time to be a golf fan.

This season, ESPN+ will offer more than 4, 300 hours of exclusive PGA TOUR golf coverage as part of a nine-year PGA TOUR Live deal.

In all, ESPN+ will have live coverage of more than thirty-five PGA TOUR golf events beginning with the Sentry Tournament of Champions. In twenty-eight of those, ESPN+ will have full days of coverage and four simultaneous live feeds.

I subscribe to ESPN+ as part of a reasonably-priced package that includes Disney and Hulu. My main motivation for that was that ESPN+ has coverage of a great many West Virginia University football, basketball and baseball games. Disney and Hulu were a nice bonus.

The first of the four-feed ESPN+ tv golf events is the American Express (formerly known as the Bob Hope and The Desert Classic). The feeds include

1. Coverage of critical action from around the course (NFL RedZone is the model)
2. A marquee group, where every shot from each player is shown
3. Featured groups, where two different groups are highlighted
4. Featured holes, where all of the shots on those holes are shown.

In a way, this is like being at a tournament in person. I’ve found that there are the two best ways to take in a PGA TOUR, Champions Tour or LPGA Tournament are to a) pick a interesting group and follow them from the first to the eighteenth or b) find a nice shady spot near a par 3 and let all the players come to you.

It seems that ESPN+ also is stepping up the production values for its tv golf. Production crews will increase from 85 to 210, with fifteen announcers. A total of sixteen cameras will be in operation.

Further, two of the tournaments covered will be the Masters and the PGA Championship.

ESPN+ can be watched as a streaming channel, on ESPN.Com and on the ESPN App.