Mojo 6 telecast elicits more laughs than suspense

If you're planning to watch the second half of the Mojo 6 telecast on Sunday, you may want to place some side bets on the action with friends and family. And by "action," I don't mean the outcome of the matches (they were decided two weeks ago, so anyone with an internet connection already knows what happened) but the hysterically cliche-filled editing by CBS Sports.

Part of the joy of watching Saturday's two-hour broadcast was trying to guess what painful slow-motion sequence would come next: a close-up of a hand pulling on a glove, perhaps, or a hair-flinging downswing. Every two minutes, you had the dramatic effect of feet walking down the fairway followed by a close-up of a player staring intently at her target. We lost count of close-up glove shots. We marveled at the disco music covering the entire show. And as much as we love Paula Creamer, bless her, we writhed in pain every time she delivered another voice-over line as if she was reading snippets from her fifth-grade paper. Sadly, the whole thing was nothing short of comical. And not in the "I'm laughing with you" way...

Don't get me wrong, I think the Mojo 6 tournament is a fantastic idea (for more details on its revolutionary format, click here). And I understand that trying to squeeze 24 six-hole matches into a two-hour telecast is an impossible task. But wouldn't it have been better to show more of the actual golf action -- in regular speed -- than have Bill Macatee rattle off results over strange slo-mo sequences and glam footage of the players, interspersed with odd comments by Creamer (and even more oddly, once in a while by Jill McGill) that were obviously taped long after the golf shots in question were hit? You can tell the players were uncomfortable in their introductory staged close-ups (straight out of The Big Break, Survivor or any other reality game show), yet the show kept coming back to them. It's hard to miss the same players' eyes rolling back into their heads when they're being interviewed by Anna Rawson in a Mojo 6 tank top. The contestants' attempts at playing along with the charade are commendable (hey, all 16 -- except for amateur Mariah Stackhouse, who accounted for some of the brightest moments in Saturday's show -- made a check in Jamaica), but none of them are great actors.

The Mojo 6 tournament deserved to be aired live two weeks ago, with none of the silly overproduction. A 14-day delay is just too long, and whoever put the finishing touches on the show must be a complete novice to golf television (either that, or they're trying out a new slow-motion button on their editing board). Let's hope the event comes back next year, on live TV. From what I could tell during the momentary snippets of real golf during Saturday's show, it was one heck of an exciting ride.

--Stina Sternberg