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Thanks to Sky for putting up all those wireless HD cameras at the K club. The picture quality was simply awesome. The interactive feature allowing you to do all sorts of funky stuff was awesome as well. They are now showing all my favourite sports in HD (the others being football and cricket).

One question for you lads in the US - do you get HD broadcasts of the PGA tour ? Sky always broadcast the PGA tour live buts its scaled up rather than true HD - the picture is nowhere near as good. In fact compared to HD its pretty poor. If you do, I cant understand why we dont get it here.....

^^ i had it on in HD, JJ henrys 2nd shot on the hole he made eagle was stunning, i saw the entire shot from the second it left the face, that to me is like being there

The HD quality is certainly good, but if the interactive features on HD were the same as regular Sky, then I thought they were very poor, together with a lot of the quality of the rest of the coverage.

On my interactive, with 6 screens to choose from, you could only see statistics, off course features, etc., and no extra golf coverage. I don't understand, why, if Sky are able to simulcast 8 Champion's League games across Europe on interactive, they can't show 4 golf matches at once all from the same venue.

Also much of the coverage was badly delayed. Paul Casey's hole in one, for instance, was shown 7 minutes after Radio 5 coverage told us about it !

You saw it in HD because SKY TV in the UK put up all the HD cameras for the event.

What I am asking is whether or not the US broadcasters go HD on the PGA tour (for at least the major events) ?

If they do, then I cant understand why SKY broadcasts them in scaled up SD here ??!!!! After watching the Ryder cup in HD I am smitted with the quality.

^^ yea they go in HD on everyone, i watch CBS HD, and NBC HD, also the ryder cup for me was on INHD, its still being run

Allow me to add to this. I consider myself to be an HD junkie...

At this point, it's rare you'll see a major sporting event (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis) that is not being broadcast in HD. 90% of NFL games are carried in HD, and I had 100% of my Red Sox games in HD this season, home AND away. ESPN national broadcasts of most NBA and NHL games are in HD as well as college sports.

Basically, what I am saying is, almost every arena and stadium is set up now to broadcast in HD. As a viewer, you are ALL SET so long as you have the proper equipment and HD provider (local cable company or satellite). Be advised that some cable providers vary with the HD channels that they offer. For example, my cable provider didn't give us CBS-HD until a week before the NFL season last year. So I was missing out on my Pats in HD.

Now, as far as the golf in HD goes...

I saw more golf in HD this year than ever before. All 4 majors were in HD as well as the Ryder Cup. I saw that the Senior US Open was in HD. But other than that, you're weekly run-of-the-mill events are not being filmed and broadcast in HD....yet. I read somewhere that NEXT season all CBS golf broadcasts will be in HD.

Understand that golf is the most difficult to provide in HD. There are many more cameras involved than in a football or baseball stadium. Additionally, all of that special wiring has to be run along the ground at golf events. So it makes it a bit more tricky and EXPENSIVE.

But I admit, golf in HD is right at the top of the list for being an all together different experience in HD. It is absolutely incredible. I waited FOREVER to finally see golf in HD and it finally happened when I turned on the Masters on Thursday this year. Before they even went to the intro, they showed Tiger making eagle from the fairway! THAT was my first golf HD experience and I will never forget it. I think I still have that event saved on my DVR!

The picture quality was terrific, however the coverage quality was horrific! Not sure if that is NBC's fault or Sky, but we spent a lot of time watching a players face and never seeing the flight of a ball, or a jerky camera at the green trying to pick up where the ball landed.

With only 4 groups on the course at any time during the first two days of tape-delayed coverage, we should have been able to see more golf being played.

The afternoon foursomes began coverage well into the first couple of matches. I do not pretend to know what it takes to televise a golf event, but CBS seems to do it without a glitch week in and week out, as do the other golf coverage crews in the US (ESPN, TGC, NBC).

On a sidenote, Johnny Miller is starting to grow on me.

Match play in general seems tricky to broadcast, especially when there are multiple matches on the course. They will just go to a player putting and say "This is to half the hole...". But you don't always know how it got to that point. Seeing how a hole plays out in match play is the interesting part of it (even though it usually comes down to a putt). Did a player hit a poor approach allowing the other to play conservatively? Things like that.

I suppose that's why they NEVER showed tee shots on the par 4s and par 5s. To me, it just seemed like all they were showing were the putts (this said with some hyperbole of course)...

It was particularly hard to follow on TV this time. The rain had everyone wearing basically the same color and it would always take me a few seconds to register just who was hitting, and what is the significance of showing this shot.