USGA & Fox: Happy One Year Anniversary!
/A year ago cell phones buzzed away on a warm Rochester summer evening with what looked like a belated April Fools joke. After all, the USGA wouldn't announce a new 12-year television deal with Fox Sports as their good friends at the PGA of America were about to start the year's final major, would they? After all, it's major!
Not only was the deal announced on the PGA's eve, but the timing had to be defended as a necessary evil of, well, something. Oh, good organizational practice, said the USGA's Joe Goode, who oversaw the rollout and has since left the organization.
Even more stunning was Fox's role in golf, which was non-existent until August 7th, 2014. Yet the deal was touted for Fox's ability to deliver "fresh and innovative" coverage. Compounding the timing mistake was a claim of cluelessness that the new TV contract had to be announced immediately. The USGA later said the exclusivity Fox Sports brought meant the announcers would be more knowledgable than the past announcers because they could focus more on the USGA. That went over well.
A year removed, the $90-100 million annual package begins to look more palatable considering the rising costs of sports properties. The length of the deal remains the most confounding component, unless of course there is an out clause a few years in, as some suspect. Because as our late friend Frank Hannigan pointed out, there's a reason the Masters only has a year-to-year deal. It provides the ultimate leverage.
The deal was analyzed in two excellent stories by Golf Digest's Ron Sirak, first in an overall feature about how the deal went down and later on, now-former president Glen Nager's attempted coup that would have made the USGA even more corporate. Nager has since said he will not attend at any USGA events going forward nor will he partake in traditional past-president duties like stocking the Executive Committee with cronies.
Since the announcement, Fox Sports has rolled out a mixed bag of announcements. On the plus side, they named veteran producer Mark Loomis to helm their golf operation. Loomis spearheaded ABC's coverage during the Tirico-Faldo-Azinger years, some of the greatest days in network golf coverage. As expected from The Shark's not-so-subtle hints, Fox hired Greg Norman as lead analyst and gave the lead announcer role to Fox veteran Joe Buck, a single-digit handicapper. Norman has already vowed to be fair and balanced but also not to criticize golfers. The two debuted their early fresh and innovative approach at Pinehurst and sealed their new bond with an on-air fist-bump that contrasted jarringly with the classy goodbye from Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller of NBC.
Fox snared Holly Sonders away from Golf Channel and also recently nabbed contributors Brad Faxon and David Fay. No other talent announcements have been made.
So where does this leave us a year later? The timing and deal parameters outlined publicly remain sore points with the USGA's former partners, while the hiring of Loomis has calmed many fears of crashing robots and smashmouth golf coverage. The insane prices paid for sports properties has justified Fox's overpayment a year later, but will never allow the parties involved to forget how unnecessary it was for the USGA to upstage the PGA, insult their former partners and make such a bold move.