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Hoylack, England – A lot has changed for Nick Faldo since his last birthday.
One thing, it turns out, he hasn’t: He’s going to work at least some of golf’s major tournaments from the broadcast booth.
Faldo will help out with NBC’s coverage of the Royal Liverpool tournament this week, NBC said, a move that comes after he returned to broadcasting for a brief period of golf for a tour around Augusta National with British Sky. According to NBC, Faldo will serve as an analyst for this weekend’s coverage alongside Paul Azinger and Brad Faxon, joining playmen by Dan Hicks, Mike Tirico, Terry Gannon and Steve Sands in the booth.
The six-time main champion can be seen celebrating his 66th birthday around the block in Hoylake on Tuesday morning, where he went to take the ground before this week’s coverage.
“Hoylake looks good!” chirp. Walked 18, examined all the green slopes.
Much more on the birthday boy in a bit, but today we’ll kick off the Hot Mic open championship mega preview with another birthday of sorts — one belonging to Faldo NBC counterpart Mike Tirico.
Mike Tirico Silver Anniversary
The Open Championship broadcast schedule (all times Eastern):
Thursday, July 20: 4 AM – 3 PM (USA)
Friday 21st July: 4 AM – 3 PM (USA)
Saturday, July 22: 5-7 AM (USA); 7 a.m. – 3 p.m. (NBC)
Sunday, July 23: 4-7 AM (USA); 7 am – 2 pm (NBC)
Sportscasters are like ice cream flavors: some you like, some you don’t. but some Ice cream flavors – like, say, trails of moose – are very pleasant all around and quite appreciated as being flawless even by the most subjective standards.
Mike Tirico is the moose of the tracks.
Ask anyone in the industry and they’ll tell you Tirico is among the best in the business. Spend a few minutes truly Listen to him speak and you’ll understand why. Nobody in the industry is more proficient with their language, and no one more prepared.
“How many openings does that have for you?” he asked me from behind the 18th aisle at Royal Liverpool on Tuesday morning.
One, I told him.
He said, laughing: “You dress like her.” “We have to get you some Layers. “
Tirico will know. This week, he’ll raise a glass in celebration years From preparation at Royal Liverpool when the 25th (!) Open Championships were called to Network Television.
“It’s been 27 years since the first time,” he said. “But with the year of Covid and the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, I had to skip.”
It’s hard to believe Tirico has called 25 in his Open career – at least in part because of the countless major sports broadcasts he’s called in the past quarter-century on ESPN and NBC (Super Bowls, Olympics and US Opens both in golf And Tennis). But after hearing him talk a bit about open date, there’s no doubt that at least some of his preparations for the tournament at this point are first person history.
“If I go back and see the highlights from 2006, I remember one of the gentlemen in R&A at the time referred to it as ‘Biscuit Brown,’” Tirico said with a chuckle before peering out onto aisle three. “It’s greener now.”
Time tends to have this effect on people. We can only hope that the 25th Trico Open will be as good as the previous two matches here in Hoylake.
And if not, let’s at least hope there’s some ice cream to celebrate.
Trey Wingo Experiments With “Red Zone” Golf TV
broadcast schedule: Thursday-Fri, 7/20-21: 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. ET (Peacock)
Trey Wingo has a very refined taste for golf. As for his taste in potato chips?
Let’s say “you’re still getting old.”
“My good friends in the UK have some of the strongest flavored potato chips you will ever try in your life,” he told Golf on Monday. “Be adventurous, but understand: They collect things that don’t make sense.”
Fortunately, Wingo won’t have to worry about spoiling shrimp-flavored chips this week. He will return home to Connecticut, where he is stationed. But even from a few thousand miles away, he’s happy to be back in front of the mic at the Open, where this week he’ll help cover Peacock.
“My memories of being called to the World Open are some of the best memories of my life,” he said, reflecting on a few years of coverage with ESPN. “There is no longer any old school or traditional in terms of how deeply rooted this game is.”
It should be an interesting week for Wingo, a sick golfer who occasionally dabbles in cross-sports. He and Billy Ray Brown will take over hosting duties for Peacock Full entrya new show intended to serve as a cross between the “Manningcast” format and red zone channel.
“I think the format gives us latitude,” he said. “We’ll interview some of the players and some other people will join us. I think it’s just an open-to-cover conversational style, which I’ve always enjoyed.”
In many ways, Wingo is the perfect choice for the format that was briefly outlined No lying downChris Solomon to host duties for his first trip to the US Open. Wingo is a professional golfer with deep experience in TV audio, having worked alongside NBC Golf EP production studio Mark Loomis for years at the leading worldwide label.
For a format full of promise, the two men make a pair worth watching.
Faldo finds his way home
Finally, we get back to the birthday boy, who is back on TV golf again this weekend.
It would be strange to hear Faldo voice alongside Tirico and Dan Hicks in the NBC master booth, where he’s spent most of his career. But don’t take this as any kind of bad faith: Faldo remains very close to his old CBS Golf teammates, including Ian Baker-Finch and Frank Nobilo, and CBS Sports president Sean McManus insists the decision to leave was all Sir Nick’s.
In some ways, though, this schedule represents the exact kind of rhythm-of-life Faldo was looking for when he retired from professional golf broadcasting last summer. He’ll cover two majors in 2023, but this schedule will give him freedom to contribute to his other business endeavors including Faldo Ranch, a farm and ranch he’s building on a 125-acre riverfront property in Montana.
He said that work on this project is still “swinging all the time”.
parting shots
The R&A Content Team has done it again. Every year, the good lads and teens of Royal and Ancient produce some of the most impressive golf novels of the year, and this year is no different. (A few years ago, we chronicled the creation of “The Open for The Ages,” a cool edit of popular champions that are supposed to replace the canceled 2020 tournament.) Take a quick look at this video of Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington skins game And enjoy the wonders of an entire year’s worth of custom content arm for one tournament. epic.
– I had the pleasure of meeting Kane Brown along the field at Royal Liverpool on a Tuesday afternoon, as he was doing some preparation for this weekend’s coverage with the BBC. He called it “Really Beautiful,” and it really made us happy. It was such a shame when “Brownie Score” clips walked the way of a FOX USGA convention in 2020 and disappeared into the haze. These segments were some of the most innovative forms of golf television I have seen in a long time. In that 2015-2020 era of American Golf TV, no voice told me more as a fast-growing golf fan than Ken’s.
– This video from PGA Tour of Vin Scully calling Rik Massengale’s nightmare shelter session is the kind of content I hope to dream about when I lie down at night. I’m so glad he’s in this world, and I hope you see him too.