"If you like vanilla, you’ll love CBS’ new lineup "

Hate to agree as we all want golf TV to be better, but John Hawkins pretty accurately sums up the rough start to 2020 CBS golf broadcasts here:

Dottie Pepper is excellent. Mark Immelman has a high ceiling and is fast becoming a source of pertinence and polish. Since David Feherty hopped to NBC in 2016, however, the Eye has gone blind to the value of building a team with people who played the game and are fully stocked with knowledge about every competitor, yet remain unfazed by the task of imparting pure objectivity when the situation demands it.

“Hopefully, that came out of the plug mark,” IBF offered after Matt Every dumped a pitch into a greenside bunker Sunday on Pebble Beach’s eighth hole.

“When things go wrong here, there’s no real way of taking the shortcuts,” Faldo added while Every cleaned up his triple bogey.

Pompoms and nonsense. They’re fine at a high school pep rally, but at a gathering of the world’s finest golfers vying for the largest share of a $7.8 million purse, a major network with more than 60 years in the business should know better than to shortchange its educated, dedicated viewership.

Early in 2020, it has been confounding as a viewer to hear announcers question strategic choices, or issue early critiques only to somehow always apologize in some way, or justify the play. Sometimes players just make a mistake or play a poor shot. As Hawkins notes, the viewers know and understand that such things happen in golf. Why pretend differently?