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So whattya doing the second weekend in April?
As televised sports events go, how do you counter-program Tiger Woods’ return to public golf — and on the most private of golf courses, Augusta National, no less. I’d go with color bars, perhaps the Yule Log.
The whole thing has taken on — shame on us — the anticipation of American history’s greatest televised journeys, from the first lunar landing to Richard Nixon’s departure from the White House lawn by helicopter. What have we done to ourselves? How could we allow this?
The answer hardly matters. Most of us will be watching.
And it doesn’t matter that there likely will be little different to see. Woods will still slowly, carefully study every putt from both sides of the hole. He’s not expected to be wearing a gag hat, one with the opposite ends of a bent nine-iron protruding from each ear. It’s not as if his wife will be seen along a fairway, stern look on her face, tapping her foot and a rolling pin into an open palm. Nothing can happen and we wouldn’t miss it.
Another odd thing about it all is that the Masters on CBS — CBS’s production of the first two rounds will appear on ESPN — has been a climate-controlled and patrolled show since it was first televised, in 1956. To that end, the masters of the Masters flex some brilliant, unassailable muscle by taking a lot less in TV rights money in exchange for full sway — martial law — over the telecasts, right down to their insistence that CBS announcers refer to the crowd or gallery only as “patrons.” Shoot, a few years back CBS was nabbed piping in mood-enhancing taped bird music. A bird lover recognized that the birds he was hearing through his TV set didn’t much make it south of Minnesota, let alone make it to the South. Seriously.
And there’s nothing CBS would do to mess with its consecutive string of one-year Masters contracts. There’s nothing any commercial network would do to jeopardize Masters rights.
Thus, if there’s some Tiger-based incivility at this year’s Masters — if the local “Boom-Boom Shack” plans to launch a bi-plane pulling a naughty tribute to Woods, or if Howard Stern acolytes roll through the front gate in a black Escalade with a collapsed grill — you’ll not see it on CBS’s time or dime.
To protect its Masters’ deals, CBS even ignored the otherwise highly publicized demonstrations of women’s groups that in 2003 gathered in Augusta to protest Augusta National’s exclusion of female members. (Not quite as bad as America’s rights-holding Olympic networks habitually ignoring the fact that former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch is an unrepentant WW II-era Fascist.)
The only thing that may cause some intrigue is whether the Green-Jacketed Masters’ shot-callers allow CBS to provide extra focus on Woods. They take pride in their inflexibility, their great regard for putting no one ahead of their championship. There’s even a chance that if Woods, in Round 1 or 2, draws a very early starting time — say, 8:30 a.m. — he won’t be seen live on TV that day.
Still, how could Augusta National’s shot-callers be any less interested in watching Woods than most everyone else?
As for the other networks, the only shot they have, the second week of next month, is if Woods does the formerly impossible — if he doesn’t make it to Saturday’s third round, if he doesn’t make the cut. Wouldn’t that serve everyone right, starting with him?
Tennis, anyone?