ESPN Telecast of The Open Expanded for Saturday

Pretty impressive stuff from the worldwide leader to come on at 2 am ET to show the conclusion of the delayed round 2 at The Open.

From ESPN:

Round 2 of The Open, golf’s oldest major, at St Andrews in Scotland will be concluded on Saturday morning. The round started more than three hours late Friday morning because of inclement weather.
 
ESPN has expanded its telecast schedule for Saturday to include the majority of the conclusion of Round 2, which is scheduled to begin at 2 a.m. ET (7 a.m. in Scotland). Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods are among the players who will be finishing their rounds.
 
ESPN will leave the air and return at 7 a.m. ET (noon in Scotland) for its regularly-scheduled telecast of Round 3.

Comments

[nancy]

ESPN coverage of the Open has been fantastic. They mix it up and commentators are pros; quick coverage, great field shots, just on top minute-to-minute. Also, informative side stories are well produced.

[Doctor]

Give ESPN over Fox any day and (wishfully) twice on Sunday.

[nancy]

Fox...OMG...no thank you! Now...wondering how Golf Channel deals with this!

[Blue Canyon]

Tiger gets to play on the weekend on TV!
Oh wait - Ok, sorry...

[The O]

Anyone have an idea of how long this coverage might go at 2? I'm not going to be awake until 4 and I want to set the DVR.

[Cheeks]

ESPN has been fantastic. They have set the bar.

[V60]

the coverage is very good. and thank you espn for not giving us wall to wall coverage of Tigers round. however stop with the adoration of Jordan is just as annoying as your obsession with Tiger. I swear if Jordan went to the bathroom on the course the announcers would say he did it with such maturity. good grief and guys lay off the "dustin must come back from the depths of emotional hell and how will he rebound" from his loss at the US Open. Do you have any idea what it must like to go home after that and make sweet love to Paulina? It would make you forget about losing the US Open pretty damn quick. LOL.

[nancy]

@V60 - you are right on! DJ is quick but I'm sure he knows his stuff not to be quick all the time. Ha!

[KS]

St. Andrews and ESPN beat Chambers Bay and Fox 10 & 8.

[Tee vee troller]

I'd hold off the praise for ESPN doing this. It's pretty standard stuff these days, Golf Ch. would surely do the same. Not so sure about CBS.

Agreed their production is superb along with announcers (with a few exceptions like SVP and Dottie Pepper).

[nancy]

@Tee vee troller - I'm not disagreeing that Golf Channel could not do a great job; they just don't have the contract.

[Kathy Hite]

I agree Dottie is a double bogey; her knowledge of men's golf is about as weak as her playing etiquette.

[ol Harv]

"St. Andrews and ESPN beat Chambers Bay and Fox 10 & 8."

KS, that's not going to make Joe Buck very happy based on some of his responses last week.

[Colin MacGillivray]

Here in Malaysia we are getting the European Tour commentators plus Peter Alliss. Who else gets this?

[KyleU]

From my viewing of the first two days something about SVP just bugs me every time he talks. Curtis Strange seems to misspeak quite often. After so many years on ABC I thought he would be better. Rest of the team minus Pepper has been good although they do seem to talk over each other. Might be a product of not working together very often.

[Griffin]

SVP can be a bit much at times but every now and then he can be kind of funny like when he exclaimed 'weeeeee!!!!' as they overlayed all the ProTracers from the first two days on the 17th tee shot. It was so random and out of nowhere it was pretty funny to me anyway. But I like a little light hearted humor every now and then to remind us this isn't heart surgery we're watching.

[James H.]

I'm not as thrilled with ESPN

Saw most of it today, some on the matrix channel with all four feeds on Directv. So many times with 3 of 4 on DJ & JS.

Too much time spent on Faldo & Watson, though TW's finish was late at dusk. Azinger makes it about himself.....Faldo's sweater was traumatic for him?

There were players playing.

Show them.

Poor efforts from SVP, Pepper...what does Andy North bring?

Next

[OWGR Fan]

@KyleU ...... The networks of ESPN/ABC are one and the same. All in the Disney corporate umbrella. Curtis has been the same broadcasting whether over the air (ABC) on terrestrial tv or cable (ESPN/ESPN2, etc.).

He really has never been "great" on either television/broadcast platform. Enjoy the course and pay less attention to the comments on TV regardless of how bad one might consider them. Unless of course you find a BBC produced/announced stream on-line.

Cheers mate.

[RickABQ]

Interesting point that DJ played 8 shots this morning in the wind, and the group waiting on 11 tee played none.

[Gag]

Please :(

The worldwide leader? Embarrassing for the leader of sports broadcasting to not have shot tracer on every hole at one of least defined golf scrapes known to golfers worldwide.

Furthermore, we have almost columnist/sensationalistic opinions shriveling out of some former USA pros mouths.

A great championship nonetheless

[Ryan]

Before you praise ESPN for their coverage, showing Tiger less et al. They get the feed from the BBC. If they had free hand, they would show Tiger wall to wall

[Geoff]

Ryan,
ESPN uses their own crew. They split off 7 or 8 years ago from using BBC cameras which, in my viewing here has been been worse than usual. We see the ESPN feed but can't hear it and it's sensational looking. And not surprised from the comments above that the announce team has been solid too.

[rgw]

I've thought ESPN has been OK the last few days, but even that, it's dormie 4 vs. FOX.

[PA PLAYA]

Entirely too many commercials, but I guess the Green Coats have spoiled us a bit in that department. Aside from the occasional talking over one another, the telecast hasn't been any different from years past. Which tells me that Fox really bombed in their debut at Chambers, to hold ESPN's telecast in such high praise.

Hell, it took Matsuyama birdieing the first four holes before they decided to add him to the Johnson-Spieth coverage.

While living in London a few years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed the BBC telecast. They set the standard as far as this yank is concerned.