Peter Alliss: Broadcasters Speak About "The Great Man"
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Peter Alliss’s life as a player, writer, architect and overall presence in the game is never to be dismissed, but for a generation on both sides of the Atlantic he will most affectionately remembered for his singular broadcasting presence. And maybe with a little luck, the outpouring of appreciation for “The Great Man” might remind network executives and tours of the many ways to call a golf shot. Not that anyone before or after will ever do it quite like Peter Alliss.
With so many of the legendary ABC voices now gone, Judy Rankin is one of the last members of their core team and she fought back tears to speak so beautifully of Alliss in this Golf Central segment with Todd Lewis.
My favorite line: he had “a way of expressing himself that was sometimes beautiful that was sometimes a guteral noise that none of us could get away with.”
Mike Tirico offered this on Twitter:
I hope this full tribute from another ESPN colleague Terry Gannon, could be posted. But in the meantime thanks to Jeremy Schilling for posting this:
Jim Nantz learned the news as he was entering storied Lambeau Field for today’s Packers game on CBS. For a few years the two were paired at times on BBC Open Championship broadcasts, prompting this fantastic remembrance in 2011 by Martin Kelner of Nantz interviewing Alliss on air during his 50th Open behind the mic and getting to call the conclusion of Darren Clarke’s win, calling that a “career achievement.”
“We’ve lost an icon,” Nantz told me in a phone interview this morning. “He was so brilliant in so many ways. His treatment of the game, the way he saw it from so many angles as a player, as a commentator and as an architect. He could keep it light and breezy, he could be critical when it was needed because he had such a depth of knowledge about the history of the game and every situation.”
Nantz has been listening to The Open Championship podcast while quarantining for two days in hotels prior to every NFL game he calls, including a recent stretch of three games in eight days.
“I heard Peter’s voice all day yesterday,” Nantz said of listening to the 1981 edition won by Bill Rogers with clips of Alliss’s original commentary featured prominently. “That perfect prose…it was poetry.”
Nantz says that as loved as Alliss was in the United States when hosting the Open Championship solo for stretch each day on ABC (but paired with someone during the ESPN years), The Great Man never “got the full appreciation over here that he merited.”
In particular Nantz was struck by Alliss’s ability to go from one broadcast to another—two distinct approaches with ABC and BBC—in a matter of minutes. “One minute there is an audience your speaking and then another you’re presenting yourself to another continent with a totally different format. I admired him deeply.”
From Nick Faldo and Frank Nobilo:
I loved this from Open Champion and future broadcaster Padraig Harrington appearing on BBC 5 with Stephen Crossman:
A sampling of his great calls starting with 1999’s uber-prescient, “What to do, what to do.”
Tiger’s chip-in at the Masters:
And the call that introduced him to a younger audience and became a “thing” whenever Miguel Angel Jimenez hit the range.
