Iona Stephen interviews Max Homa during the Genesis Scottish Open in 2022.
@Iona_Stephen
It was only five weeks ago PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan gave a press conference at the tournament’s end-of-season championship, promising that fans would see changes coming to the tournament’s broadcasts. This week, that change begins.
Starting Thursday and continuing with the following two events (Black Desert Championship, Shriner’s Children’s Open), the tour will test player interviews as part of what it calls “a spent player/broadcaster partnership.”
“During the fall of the FedExCup, we will be piloting a new broadcast approach with Golf Channel at several events,” Monahan said in August. “On Thursday we will show the fans a traditional broadcast. Then on Friday, the launch will adopt new features based on fan feedback.
“We will then survey fans to test their preferences and this intelligence will help us further innovate the broadcasts with our fans more in the driver’s seat.”
It remains unclear what Friday’s innovations will look like, but an emphasis on showing players near the 36-hole tee line could be part of it. As Monahan put it, the Tour hopes to “modernize broadcasting.”
As for Thursday, the interviews will start with Sanderson Farms Tour this week, played in Jackson, Miss. The tournament communicated its intentions with the players, beginning with a statement that all interviews are voluntary and will be limited in scope. They will be conducted by Golf Channel reporters who are “assigned by the PGA Tour” and will consist of just two short questions, exclusively about the competition. Interviews will take place on a designated par-3 after all players have hit their shots.
So what does this look like?
The tour began doing in-house interviews in early 2023, miking players for a hole with an Apple AirPod. Max Homa led the chargetaking this walk and talk on the 13th hole at Torrey Pines during the Farmers Insurance Open. This week’s interviews will be different. They will obviously be much shorter in length and will take place on Thursday. Homa’s walk and talk arrived during the third round of a tournament while he was competing. It was also agreed before the round, as the producers had to lock down a player engagement before they would go out.
Thursday interviews are likely to be more spontaneous or spur of the moment, not facilitated hours before. The shorter nature of these interviews should also allow Golf Channel to hear from multiple players throughout the day. Mic’d up walk-and-talks are mostly limited to just one player each day.
The look and feel of these interviews is beyond imagination. They already exist, and with good frequency, on the DP World Tour broadcasts presented by Sky Sports. Iona Stephen and their fellow Sky Sports journalists on the course have been interviewing players in short bursts in recent years, walking past them for a minute or two after they leave a tee box. You can watch some of those clips below.
