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Interesting to get your views on the television coverage of The Open. It is my view that the coverage is severely lacking in the qualities that we are used to in Australia. The UK coverage contains far to much on aerial shots and the beach views have become very boring after three days. It is difficult to get a good perspective of the slopes around the course as I am sure it isn't as flat as it appears on the coverage.The lack of interviews takes a lot out of the presentation and not once have I seen players warming up on the practice fairway. Continuity of play is also a real problem where you see a player hitting a shot into a difficult position only to never see his attempt to recover. On the plus side is the commentary, just love the comments and they have done there homework on the stats and players biographies. In summary we are spoilt in this country with fantastic telecasts and I WILL be watching the finale tonight.

I miss the presence of David Fehrety. It's a bit bland without him. Sort of like watching the World Series without Bob Costas.

The ABC coverage is horrible...commercials every three seconds and other than Faldo, the announcers lack any insight, it seems. I much prefer CBS.

I prefer CBS to ABC, but overall NBC is the best. They've got a lot of very good announcers and Lanny Wadkins gets on my nerves at times. The NBC lead announcer Dan Hicks is a wannabe Jim Nantz, but other than that they've got some great announcers with Miller, Koch, Maltby, and Rolfing. ABC is far behind the other 2 networks for sure though, despite them having Faldo and North (both are GREAT).

I agree, the constant commercial breaks are annoying. There were many times we didn't get to see shots made by some of the leaders. And several times they showed the player making a chip shot, and failed to follow the ball afterwards, leaving us to wonder where it ended up until they showed the person putting. Aggravating, and I sure wish there was an alternative network for major events like this.

I agree. I stopped watching the third round yesterday because of all the commercials. At one point I think they had some kind of technical difficulty so there was a traight 5-6 minutes of commercials. After that it was a short 1-2 minute coverage and then back to their next scheduled commercials break. I pretty much had it at that point.

Yesterday, especially on the front nine, it seemed like we hardly saw any of Tiger and Ernie's tee shots. They kept going to commercial and coming back, and the first shots they'd show would be approach shots from the fairway, etc. of the final group. I'm sitting there going, "Now why didn't you show us the tee shots?" I was thinking that especially when Ernie went into the gorse. Some awful selling out by ABC to get money from sponsors.

I dunno about you guys, but during Tiger's interview on ABC after the round, he was talking and they cut to a commercial right at that moment! I was a bit upset...but luckily they came back within a few seconds.

Thank the Lord we get British coverage - Sky sports with commentators like Renton Laidlaw and very few commercial breaks. Coverage from 1st tee-off to final putt - doesn't do much for one's domestic bliss but it's only 4 days!!

I must say that this year the BBC's ball flight following was not as slick as it usually is, but everything else was up to their normal standard - BRILLIENT.

thank god ABC is losing golf

Azinger isn't good unless you like sarcastic mumbling all day

Tirico has improved but is still below average

Faldo should just talk about the golf because he is really good at it rather then try to be funny all the time

Peter Allis is a gem he saved the dreadful broadcast

Andy North is ok

how Bobby Clampett keeps his job at CBS is amazing , he is bothersome to listen to ... but then again CBS hired Lanny Watkins to be in the booth at the 18th

Golf should just be on CBS w/ Nantz , Johnny Miller , Feherty, Roger Maltbie, Allis , Faldo , Peter Kostis, North , Judy Rankin , Verne Linquist .... that would be good

I agree with all about too many commercials. I missed Sunday's final round, however on Saturday they would show two shots (three if we were lucky) and then break for a commercial.

Also, anytime they broke from Tiger or the top 4, to show someone else putting or chipping, it was on tape and you knew ball was going into the hole.

I think we spend a lot of unnecessary time criticizing the broadcasts.

The commentators themselves... It's not like calling play-by-play in baseball or football. There is a lot of down time. It's tough to explain what you think a player may have been trying to do on a particular shot.

The broadcast and commercials... There are dozens of players on the course. Managing the shots that we see, in a somewhat of a chronological order, can't be a cut-and-dry thing. Occasionally we are going to miss a shot when it happens live. And if someone chips in while they were at break, you can be sure we'll see it. Sure there are a lot of commercials to pay for this thing. But if you didn't notice, there wasn't a single commercial break as Tiger came down the stretch.

We do this every single Major....

And, one of Azinger's best comments came right at the end...

I'm paraphrasing...

"Sergio wishes Tiger was about 42 years old right now. Unfortunately he's not. If Sergio wants to win Majors, he's seeing first hand what he's up against."

Do not know if any of you caught the Open on TNT (I think that is correct network letters) at least there were much less commercials only problem is they had to cut away at start of coverage by ABC. Of course you did not get to see the leaders either but at lest you got to see golf and not ABC sponsors selling something ever minute and half.