The Loop

Media: 'I never got this far in my dreams'

April 08, 2012
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(Photo by Getty Images)

CBS' mandate in televising the Masters is rather simple, really. Don't mess it up. Uncannily, it is handed a remarkably entertaining script year after year, this one even featuring a character named Bubba and another nicknamed Shrek.

Bubba Watson won and Louis Oosthuizen (aka Shrek) lost, but CBS achieved its objective.

"Oh, my goodness, just a classic excuse to conjure up another piece of magic," Nick Faldo said eloquently, after Watson's second shot, a duck hook from the woods, on the second playoff hole, the shot that delivered victory.

David Feherty also shined on Sunday, starting with his unusual call of Oosthuizen's double-eagle at the second hole.

There was no television -- and therefore no commentary -- when Gene Sarazen made his double-eagle at 15 in the 1935 Masters, but had there been, suffice it to say that it would not have resembled Feherty's call:

"This one could be very nice...could be very nice...oh, come to papa, yes!"

Feherty ably summed up Oosthuizen's apparent unflappability in the heat of a Masters Sunday. "It was not meant to look this simple," he said.

"I'd just love to know his heartbeat," Faldo added.

But the star of this show was Watson, down to the Butler Cabin interview.

"I never got this far in my dreams," Watson said.

All in all, a performance worthy of the script with which it had to work.

A few objections, meanwhile

-- Phil Mickelson's conversations with caddie Jim Mackay are entertaining, but not at the expense of seeing another contender's shot. While the audience was listening to Mickelson and Mackay talking over the second shot at 15, Watson was hitting his tee shot at 16 and he hit it close. The roars gave it away.

-- Peter Oosterhuis said this about Watson: "He's the most creative player ever." Never say ever, notwithstanding Watson's magic on second playoff hole. Remember Seve?

-- Adam Scott made an ace on the 16th hole, but CBS did not show it until Scott was playing the 18th hole. Odd.

-- What happened to that man felled by Peter Hanson's drive on the eighth hole?

A thought

Phil Mickelson's painful butchery of the fourth hole leaves one longing for the days Augusta National would not permit the televising of the front nine.

How bad was it? "Phil, my man, you're giving me a stomach ache bro. #gobacktothetee," Arron Oberholster wrote on Twitter.

Goydos: 'This isn't paint by numbers here'

It seems a given that should Paul Goydos need a fallback position to competitive golf a broadcasting career awaits him, given his wit and intelligence.

Here's why, this his response on Golf Channel to a question about parallels between Mickelson and Ballesteros:

"You talk about artists, this is Van Gogh and Monet. This isn't paint by numbers here. These guys are the best at making golf an art form as opposed to a sport and they do things that just quite frankly we can't."

On Twitter

Greg Norman Jr. "leading #TheMasters will make anyone turn into a 15 handicapper"

Comment: Greg Norman Jr.'s father is...well, figure it out.

-- John Strege