No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 146: Joe Buck

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

Fox’s Joe Buck joins to talk about the 2018 U.S. Open, what it’s like to call golf compared to other sports, and how he deals with criticism. He discusses how the Fox team recovered from... The post NLU Podcast, Episode 146: Joe Buck appeared first on No Laying Up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That is better than most. That is better than most. Better than most! All right ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast calling in from the West Coast Mr. Joe Buck the host of Fox Sports the US Open on Fox Sports Joe. What's going on out west? Well, I am sitting in front of a beautiful library at the University of Southern California. I just pushed my daughter into a quad where she congregated with her other people in her major.

And she is registering for fall classes as a freshman. So, proud daddy here in Southern California and about 73% of my brain is actually in the Hamptons on Long Island getting ready for Shinnecock. As I sit here, talk to you and try to help her with her core requirements for her major. So I got a lot going on in this small, small mind, huge head, and hoping that I can make sense of it all come next Thursday. When you step foot on a college campus to people say things to you, yell things at you, hopefully it's not still yelling, already laying at you, I would hope.

No, it's, yeah, that's kind of died down, although I kind of miss it to be honest with you. I miss those days. Those glorious days have already lying references. And it was funny. This is I guess kind of name dropping, but my daughter's roommate is Laurie Loughlin from Full House, her daughter. And the only reason why that came to be is because I'm friends with Lori Loughlin's husband,

not Moss, who owns G4, and just sold the Peter Malar, and he's a good buddy of mine. And so that's how that all came to be. And yesterday, when we were walking on campus, a mother and a daughter saw Lori Loughlin and I walking together as we were kind of killing time while our daughters were registering and they almost fell on the ground because of Lori Loughlin and they had me take the picture of them for

Loughlin and the head of housing. The Dean of Housing came up and he's like that's so awesome they have no idea that you do sports for a living and I said I know it's great. So I took their picture and they they went on about their lives and yeah it's it's good walking with Lori took their picture and they went on about their lives. And yeah, it's good, walking with Lori. It felt like I was walking with Troy Acman because I could basically walk naked and nobody even notices me, it's all about Acman.

And I like it that way. There you go. So what is, and a lot of people are really familiar with you, obviously, it's called Super Bowls. You've called World Series. But I wanted to kind of know what your background was in golf growing up or into your adult life before you started calling Golf for Fox in 2015.

Well, I mean, I don't know that I was anymore qualified to call golf four years ago than anybody else because all I was was an avid golfer. I was a casual golf television viewer. I was one of those guys that as a kid, my dad was obsessed with watching it on a Sunday afternoon and I didn't get it as a little kid because I didn't, it just was, it bored me.

And eventually my dad's like, look, when you get older and you're worn out, there's nothing better than to lay on the couch and watch golf on a Sunday. And eventually as I became a young dad and then a guy that was doing all these different events, I couldn't wait to get to my couch and TV and watch golf. But I love playing. And I feel like I understand what these guys are trying to do.

They do it at a level I'll never understand, obviously. But I'm just a golf player, somebody who is at times a hack, at times decent, and somebody who loves and appreciates the beauty of the game. And I think also appreciates how hard it is. And I think sometimes watching on TV, you know, you don't get the sense that everybody remembers just how difficult it is with these guys are trying to do. So, you know, once I jumped in four years ago, it was a major undertaking. And I think a lot more than I had any idea about its way faster than any other thing I cover, which is counterintuitive. You think it should be slower, but it's actually really fast when you're doing it on TV. And you know, when

we jumped in and Johnny Miller had his comment that you don't just fall out of a tree and do a US open. On one hand, he's right. On the other hand, there's really no other way to do it. You just have to go jump in and figure your way through it. And now that we're in your four, we've done all these events. I feel like we're better at it. I feel like I'm better at it. And I'm looking forward to it more than I'm worried about it and that that's a really good feeling for me. Yeah, I want to kind of talk about 2015 and get into the steps you guys have made to improve it since then and break that down. But for first, I want to know kind of take us there for what it's like to call golf compared to your other sports and what's maybe something like viewers at home don't understand about what it's like to call a golf tournament. It's just, it's crazy. I didn't know and maybe that's because I'm not very smart that when you call a golf event, you know, I could call that out of my basement in St. Louis.

There's really no difference. I mean, I do love walking the driving range. I do love talking to guys and I've gotten to know guys over the years and I knew a lot of them before I got in the golf Just having played with a few of them and you know been been somebody that kind of ran in some of those circles, but I Didn't realize that the difference is when I go do a Super Bowl I don't care what event the world series. I'm walking in. I've got the best seat in the house I see everything and and whatever comes out of my mind best seat in the house. I see everything and whatever comes out of my mind, it comes out of my mouth and it's kind of up to me. Now we've got a producer and a director and we all work together in baseball and football and if I see a major picture change in front of me while I'm watching the game, my attention goes to what's on the screen and they follow me or I follow them. But in golf, I sit there in a booth.

I'm watching no live golf with my eyes, meaning eyes on somebody on grass. I'm watching televisions. I'm not even facing the golf course. I'm facing away from the golf course in a stationary position. And so when somebody's making a move on 10, 11, 12, you know, kind of where Capca went last year at Aaron Hills before I butchered who his girlfriend was, but we can get into that later. Oh, we will. Yeah, I'm sure we will. I'm not watching it. I'm only as good as what's provided to me

in my ear and what's provided on the TV screen. And that's a really unnerving feeling in my world. You know, I'm going to get criticized no matter what I do. But I want it to be a criticism of what I come up with instead of if somebody says, hey, we're going to 12 and here's Speed for Birdie. And it's actually the 13th hole in Speed's Puttin for par. If that comes out of my mouth, well, it's my mistake, but I'm not there to watch it. So it's a really foreign feeling. And I'm finally, through all these different events

we've done, whether it's the USAM or the women's open or it's the senior open, I finally feel like I have a good rhythm with the producer and with the guys I work with to really actually do a good job with it. And that just takes time. That's the way TV and life works. There you have it. So all of your mistakes were because somebody just fed you bad information. No, not that mess with you. That was what happened the last year, though, with the girlfriend thing, like, you have somebody in your ear the entire time feeding information all day. And you're essentially, I would imagine you're reading something off a card or somebody

gives you that info as the girlfriend shows up on screen. And you end up... Yeah, she kept popping up. I had no idea. I barely know Brooks. Now, now I've gotten to know him really well. After the fact, we've laughed about it a hundred times, and I've had him at different events that I've done baseball and football.

But at the time, you know, she kept popping up on the screen. And so, when I got a card from a guy in the back, he actually doesn't even work at Fox. We used him for the week. He's at another network that covers a lot of golf. he handed me the card and I read it and it was you know old information by a week or whatever it was. And and I had to wear it but but as I've said on other shows since then, you know that guy handed me 5,000 things. It made me look way smarter and way more in tune with the golf world than I am or that I even can be. And so if I'm going to come off like the smart guy by reading his cards, you know, if one's wrong, then one's wrong. And that's, you know, it's weird. We kind of live in a society where

you can't laugh at that stuff or at least, you know, I tried to laugh it off. And what was so bad was it was kind of the last taste in everybody's mouth, or at least us as a network going off the air. And I will tell you, if you were talking to my daughter or my wife who were in the car with me on the way home after, on the way to the airport after that event, I think they were worried about me. I've never gone into a funk like that in my life. I just I thought I was having a breakdown because I thought man we just worked our asses off for four straight days for however many hours a day and week prior or whatever, that's going to be what anybody talks about. And it was such an awful feeling. I felt like I let everybody down. I felt like it was a gaff and you don't know whatever that means. And you don't want to be in that category.

But that's the kind of stuff you have to deal with. And it's my mistake. If it comes out of my mouth, it's my mistake. And I make plenty on my own. And so I don't blame anybody. If I'm going to say it, I should know it. And if I don't know it, then it's up to somebody else to provide the information. And if it's wrong, then it comes back on me. So I don't blame him. I've never said his name. I never will. And again, the guy made me look smarter than I was all week. Yeah, no, that's kind of what you know, just in doing a podcast seeing it. It's easy. We have an editing process like you can take stuff out

You can make you know, if there's a mistake made you can edit that out or whatnot But to be on alive on the air for eight hours a day or whatever it was and to really crush it all week like you guys did I thought you guys had a great week. And just to have that happen just had to be so deflating, but I mean, that's still thinking. When you walk into a compound, it's the TV, the truck compound, and afterward it's like, nobody really wants to say anything to you.

And you just want to hide. And I've done a lot of stuff in my life, and some of it good, some of it bad, and most of it in between. And I've never a lot of stuff in my life and some of it good, some of it bad, and most of it in between. And I've never walked into the truck compound like I wanted to dig a hole in the gravel and just lay down. And that was one of those words like, Jesus, guys, I'm so sorry that I got it wrong.

And then a lot of some people on our crew, in front of and behind the camera were like, well, facts really sold you out because he said, you know, that's not his current girlfriend, his current girlfriend is whatever the hell her name is. I don't know. I didn't know then and I don't know now. And I said, no, that's exactly what Brad should have done. And if you go off the air and you get the name right, whether I made a mistake or not, as long as you don't go off the air and you're saying the wrong girl's name or, you know,

something maybe more important than that, the wrong golfer's name or the wrong score or the wrong whatever, if you get a right before you go off the air, so what, you can, at some day you can laugh at it and finally I'm at the point where I can kind of laugh at it. Well, I want to kind of go back to when you first started getting into to calling golf and with Fox, you know, doing the deal with the broadcast deal with the USGA, were you involved? I get what when did you start becoming involved in that process, were you involved in any of the proposals or once they had the rights, did they come to you and say, is this something that you're interested in doing? I feel like when I found out for the first time that they were even talking to the USGA

and it was even a possibility. We were at a football seminar and somebody came up to me, one of the bosses came up to me and said, hey, I think we're going to have a big unveiling later today and we were finally able to keep something quiet. And I remember having no idea what the guy was talking about, and then it came out later in the day that Fox had signed this deal with the USGA. And I was not a part of it at all. And my boss, Eric Shanks, came up and said, you know, that's something we would want you to call if you feel like you're comfortable with it. And part of me thought, no, and the other part of me thought it's a great challenge. And if somebody's gonna do it around here, I want to be the guy to do it. And then it became, you know, how do I do it? And thank God, Mike Tureko reached out,

came, you know, how do I do it? And thank God Mike Toreco reached out, was willing to help me. I think is fantastic being a golf host and he was, he went above and beyond. Gave me his notes from the US Open, the Year prior. And was there to kind of guide me through the mechanics of it. And eventually, like I've said, you gotta do it to figure out what you need to

know, what you don't need to know, and eventually, you know, you kind of settle into a rhythm, but it was, I was new to golf, and just about everybody we had on the air was, was new to TV for the most part in those roles. And it was a high wire act. I'm. I look back and I couldn't be more proud that we got on and off the air. We had the right winner and we lived to fight another day. It was a major undertaking and I think we've gotten a lot simpler since then and I think that's been the best thing that we could have done. It's kind of simplify the process because we don't do a lot of golf. I think the simpler is better and I think we're finally there with that.

So that like Monday after that week and people were very critical of the broadcast overall, myself included, and what was the reaction of the team like Monday after that week it finished? Knowing that you had this ridiculous challenge ahead of you going into it but receiving the criticism that you guys got in 2015, what was the atmosphere like shortly after that? Well, I feel like and I don't know the exact way it was laid out but I feel like we kind of picked right up and we went to another event. I don't know if it was the women's open or the senior whatever it was, I'm guessing women's and it was okay, well that we got that under our belt. No, now let's try it again You know the criticism I think is is something that

You have to Expect you know when when people first of all when people don't really I don't know that if anybody really cares That much and in the real world But for the golf fan that's used to turning on NBC and seeing the US Open, well now they're turning to Fox. Now you've got the, you know, the Foxification of golf, and that had everybody worried. And then, you know, you were Chambers Bay, and it becomes, you know, one of these US opens that's got as much chatter about the golf course and the condition

of the greens, and now we're covering it. And it just was kind of the perfect storm that I think everything else after that kind of felt easy, not not easy, but easier. And so the the criticism I think in this world is you know everybody kind of sits back and takes shots, but until you've been in there and done it, you know you don't know all that was going on behind the scenes and I'm telling you I'm really proud of that US Open as much as anything I've ever done because it was such a major undertaking. We had more trucks than any super bowl I've ever covered. And, you know, we were trying to do a million things. And a lot of the things that we did that week have since been picked up by other networks. And I think, you know, in a small way,

improved other networks coverage. But, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get criticized. But that's why you But yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get criticized, but that's why you make the money and make and you get to be Mr. Big Shot and walk around and act like you're Mr. Sports. You have to be willing to take the criticism, take in the constructive parts of it, and listen to it, and try to get better because of it. And if nobody cared, that would be awful.

And people do care, and that makes you work harder and get better because of it. And if nobody cared, that would be awful. And people do care. And that makes you work harder and get better. And I think we've done both of those things. Yeah, though, I think there was no other way for that first year to happen other than for it to go poorly. Like you said, all the elements that were going into it, it was a perfect storm. And it was just gonna be growing pains no matter what.

I think we all expected that. What I like the most is I think you guys went from being not, that first you're not going well to being, I think, a leader in the industry because you dusted yourselves off and you improved on so many things from 2016. But I kind of wanted to discuss with you. I continue to be amazed with people's just disdain for your announcing. And I want to know how you're able to kind of take criticism that doesn't seem founded in anything other than like a blind hate for you

versus criticism that is very pointed and things that you're actually like, oh you know what? I actually can build off this, I can respond to something like this. Is it clear to you kind of where that line is? Yeah, I, if I let kind of stuff like like more of the unfounded stuff or that you hate my team or this guy sucks because his dad was a broadcaster. Now he's doing it. I've been doing this for a long time now and you know I've I've I think delivered for the network so much so that they continue to sign me. I don't think they're continuing to do my dad favors, who by the way never worked at Fox.

But I think a lot of it is founded in being the national broadcaster, being considered kind of still the young guy, although I'm not anymore, you know, I started doing the World Series when I was 27. And when you do baseball, for as long as I've done it, and you do it from a national perspective instead of from a team side, eventually you're going to piss everybody off. Eventually every fan base that watches baseball baseball or football for that matter, when you're getting excited for both sides and you're screaming in yelling for the Packers, just like you are for the Cowboys, or you're screaming in yelling for the San Francisco Giants,

just like you are for the St. Louis Cardinals. Every fan base eventually thinks, well why is he yelling for that other team? He doesn't like my team. He sucks. Beyond that, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that other than to say I work hard. I feel like I try to get out of the way of the event. I feel like I and in some people take that as ambivalence and I take it or at least do it because I have such reverence for what I'm covering. I don't want to scream any hell over the top of all of it. Nobody's tuning in to listen to me broadcasts, or tuning in to watch the game.

And so I try to do my best to accent the high points and get out of the way and let you watch the game. And so whatever the online criticism is or whatever that might be to my face, people couldn't be nicer or more complimentary. For the people I work with or work for, they know what I do, they know what I handle, they know the job that I try to turn in every week.

And you know, the fact that I've been employed at one network and have done the major sports there for as long as I have is kind of my antidote to any being upset about somebody online criticizing me. It just doesn't, some of that stuff just can't enter into my head. All right, guys, it is US Open Week, of course, which means Father's Day is coming up this Sunday. And if you haven't gotten the dad or husband in your life, a gift yet, look All right guys, it is US Open Week of course, which means Father's Day is coming up this Sunday and if you haven't gotten the dad or husband in your life a gift yet, look no further than the OGO Summit Laptop Backpack.

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on ojo.com through June 20th. That's a pretty great deal, 40% off. OGO, the world's best bags. Now let's get back to Joe Buck. Yeah, it seems like, I don't know if there was ever a moment for you where you kind of trigger for you, where you kind of steer into the skid and kind of embrace the haters in some way.

Did that, was that a conscious thing for you to kind of feel that finally be like, look, I can't worry about any of this stuff anymore or were you always like that? God, no, I was not always like that. And I went from a young guy that was trying to not get exposed for being as young as I was, whether I was broadcasting to the Cardinals at 21

or I was doing World Series at 27 and trying to kinda, I don't know, guard against my insecurities and I guess in some way steer into that, at some point you gotta just stop worrying about it and go do it. And in this day and age, it's harder now than it's ever been. Not for me, just in general, you know, with kind of the online social media world, you have to be tough, but there was a year there in 2011 when I had a paralyzed vocal cord. And it was the reason why I wrote a book and I went through a divorce and I thought my

career was over. And doctors were telling me that if my voice wasn't back in three months, that this was what I was going to be left with, and I sounded like I was dying. And three months turned into four, turned into five, turned into nine. And I thought, well, this is it. You know, I'm done. And then that year, in October, my voice kind of started to come back. And, you know, ridiculously, I want an Emmy and easily the worst year that not only I have had, but any broadcasters ever had because of one moment, a home run hit in a game six of a World Series. But after that, I thought, you know,

I've taken for granted for so long what I get to do. And I went from worrying about what I was gonna say to worrying about how I was gonna say it, because I couldn't really yell and emote and get loud and I couldn't have fun and I couldn't joke because you couldn't hear me. And when you, I went into a depression and when I came out of that, I thought, screw it. You know, I'm employed, I'm happy. I'm, you know, now I'm remarried. I've got twins. I've got two girls that that love me and I adore them. And so what? If somebody doesn't like me or somebody thinks

I'm rooting against their team or somebody, what, you know, it's all noise. And I know what I do. And I know how hard I work. And I know how hard I try. And if I continue to do that, I will have been at Fox for 30 years here at some point. And that's a long run for anyone.

And I must be doing something right, or I wouldn't still be there. Yeah, no, you kind of touched on it and how you faced some of these challenges in other sports for years, but then transitioning to golf, you're kind of going into a whole new audience and a very particular audience that is used to here in certain voices for many, many years. And when they hear yours, that's just a natural reaction to kind of push back against it. But so after 2015, what were some of the things that you guys knew you needed to improve before the 2016 US Open

and what were kind of the action items to improve those things? Well, we needed to see each other. When we did 2015, our producer, who's awesome, Mark Luma and he did it at ABC and you know had Faldo and Azinger and Tureko which is as good as it gets. It was kind of set up where I was in the booth with Greg we had on-course reporters who were really kind of new to television and doing that And that's a real skill that is tough to do,

to put in a little window information that's valuable to somebody's shot that's upcoming. And then we had Brad Faxon in the 17th tower, and we had Steve Flesh in the 16th tower. Nobody could see each other. And when you're trying for timing, and you're trying to all work together as one solid unit, if you can't make eye contact,

it's really difficult. Now, if you do it every week, that's a different thing. But when you drop out of the tree, like Johnny Miller said, you need to be able to look at each other and read somebody's body language. You'll be able to reach across and tap them on the arm and say, I have something here.

And so we eliminated that. And we went to kind of more of a simplified booth setup. And this year, it'll be more simplified than ever. And I think that's the reason why. We don't do enough golf to have everybody spread out and you know find the right time to talk without talking all over each other. It also can lead to the ability to not talk. You know I think at some point here I've done enough golf now where no matter what the critics say, rightly or wrongly, I feel

like I have a better sense of what I'm supposed to do and where I'm supposed to step. And if I'm just this year, I'm sitting there just with Paul Azinger and Shane Bacon who I know you know well is sitting with Brad Fax and in another booth, and we have our specific holes, it can lead to not over talking. It can lead, there's nothing better in golf, especially with Shinnecock coming up, where you can have that low shot and the green sitting up in the air.

It's such an incredible looking golf course and intimidating. And if it's tiger, or fill, or roar, or your Jordan, or whoever, walking into the ball in silence with that kind of hum of a blimp up above and a big crowd that's quiet, and there's nothing better than that in golf. And I think when you get to the point where you don't feel like you have to prove everything you know every time you open your mouth, it can be a lot more

enjoyable to watch. And I think that's kind of where we are on the leading end of this USO. You're speaking to my soul right now, the less ego involved in the broadcast, the better for any sport. But can you? It's TV. I mean, it's redundant.

When I'm doing baseball, and I'm at Yankee Stadium, and Groundball, you know, whoever. Glaver Torres, you can see that. You don't need me to say, there's a Groundball to Glaver Torres, all I have to say is Torres picks it up, two out, and that's all you have to do. And in golf, because I think we've tried so hard

and we've heard the criticism, and I personally, nobody takes criticism to heart more than me. I'm a pleaser. I go to a therapist because of that. And I want everybody to love me. And not everybody loves me. And that's hard for me to swallow. But now you go into this, and you're like, well, I'll show them.

I know the last 10 years of Phil Nicholson's life. And I can tell you every event he's played in, and where he finished, and all that. None of that matters you you have to be able you have to be disciplined enough to shut up and and just enjoy today's event and if you can do that especially in golf then i think you have a chance to have a special broadcast and if you can't then you need to go home and take all your research and burn it and then come back and just watch golf.

And that's really how you have to go into these sites. Can you talk a bit about the overall philosophy with Fox when it comes to covering live golf? I can tell you as a viewer how I kind of, how I view it or how I consume it and what I think your guys approach is. But like if you were to kind of lay out the blueprint for how you guys are covering a golf tournament

and what the main points of emphasis are, what are the top things that you would say that you guys want to emphasize the most? Well, I mean, here's how we went into 2015 and I think people took it maybe the wrong way like these, or maybe this is just insecurity too, like these guys don't know what the hell they're doing because I I said to the group we've got microphones in the cups and that and and people thought initially well that's stupid

all you're going to hear is the ball gurgling down into the cup but what the microphones provided was an opportunity to listen to Jordan's speed yelling at himself. It provided the opportunity to listen to Jordan talk at a Michael Greller. It provided the opportunity to hear subtle conversation that we all have on greens with our buddies. Now in an intense setting that you've never heard at a U.S. open. So that was the byproduct.

They wanted to put mics in the cups because of that it would be cool to hear the ball actually go in. And that's really the last use of it. Now now it's a way to hear conversations you've never heard any US Open before. And that to me is gold. I mean, Foxes, I feel like we've always kind of been known

for good audio. In golf, that should be our calling card. Our philosophy is, if you hear any conversation, shut up. I don't care if you're in mid-sense. If you've got two words left in the sentence, finish it, but be quiet. There's nothing more important than listening to Phil Talk to his caddy, Tyher talked to his caddy, the stuff I just said with Jordan. So our philosophy is, let's be confident enough to do the less is more thing and really do that. Let's let this thing breathe and use our audio. Yeah, we want to do some bells and whistles and I think we always want to push it forward and that's also the Foxway but at the end of it, you know,

let everybody be comfortable listening to this event and having audio they've never had on their TV at home. That's got to be our overriding message and we tried to do it in 2015. I don't know if it was taken the right way. I think as we do it now in 2018, we've got a shot at having something really cool. No, that's really interesting. The audio, I remember when that was being implemented in 2015, it was a big deal and now I feel like it's just,

you guys kind of seamlessly do it to the point where I don't even necessarily notice it, which is I think a great thing. But one thing graphically and visually, do it to the point where I don't even necessarily notice it, which is I think a great thing, but one thing graphically and visually you guys do, I think the best job of showing the more top tracer than anybody else as well as kind of the graphics that show where the target is, how far away it is, and it just adds such an element to that top tracer. But, and again, maybe this is more in the production truck than it is you and the booth, but it seems there's such an emphasis on showing a ton of golf shots, live golf shots,

and that showing a lot of different players and quick cuts from player to player, instead of necessarily pounding on narratives or anything like that. So is that something that you guys are very conscious of like from a point of emphasis, live golf? Yeah, it's funny, you know, I, you could do a seminar on this.

Now, you're in the golf business, and so that's something that you would understand. I think the average sports fan has no idea because I didn't, how all that worked. And so the way I see it, and from what I read and what I've heard, NBC is known for showing more live golf shots, it's live, live, live, live, live. CBS is more about the narrative. And if somebody hit a shot on the 11th hole at Augusta half an hour ago,

now it looks live to the average viewing fan. And I think you have to be able to split split the difference um I think those two entities obviously are fantastic at calling golf and if if I'm guilty of anything it's it's me trying to uh me trying to be Jim Nance Jr. and me trying to be Dan Hicks Jr. and me trying to do what these others guys do and I think at some point you have to be yourself um but with regard to the live live live to do what these others guys do. And I think at some point you have to be yourself. But with regard to the live, live, live, I do think you also have to tell a story. And when you're doing a national championship like this, building the narrative and trying to create some drama, I think can be a good thing.

Maybe not for the hardcore golf fan that wants to see as much live as they can. I get that, and I think our producer is dead set. Mark Loomis is so good at doing as much of that as he can, but you also have to tell the story, and I think that's where I've failed. I think in the past, I haven't been good. I've been so worried about the mechanics.

I've been so worried about the research and so worried about that I'm not taking a step back and talking about what this shot could mean or what this moment could mean, whether it's Brooks Keppka or Dustin Johnson or whatever it may be. In all the years I've covered sports, I couldn't be more pleased with how we covered the Dustin Johnson maybe penalty shot,

maybe not penalty shot at Oakmont. I thought we were honest, I thought we did the best job we could in a really weird circumstance. But other than that, I think you have to be willing, and I could be wrong, of splitting to split that difference between live, live, live, live, live, live, and how can we best tell the story so that

the average golf fan or even the average sports fan is interested come Sunday late. Yeah, I think with golf, obviously, with so much going on at a lot of different locations, it's impossible to show every shot live. And I think the viewer understands that as long as the network is willing to kind of cut quickly, and you don't even necessarily need to say this is a moment ago, unless it was truly like three or four minutes ago. But you know, you get, it's impossible to, if Jordan Speeth and Roy McRoy on two opposite sides of the course and hitting shots at the same time, you just, you can't show them

at the same time. You just, you can't show them at the same time, but you can be quickly in and out of them, not showing a pre-shot routine, not sticking around to show a reaction that doesn't really mean much and if you're cutting from shot to shot. And I feel like, true, I agree with that to a certain extent.

I agree with that on Thursday and Friday, but to me, the pre-shot routine, that moment I talked about earlier of walking into a shot, having silence, having that moment of deep breath, exhale, pull the club back and go, or a reaction after the shot. Sometimes the reactions, the live reactions after a shot are priceless. And it tells the story as much as the shot, you know, the frustration or the elation or the whatever it is. So by the time you get to Saturday and definitely Sunday,

I personally, and we can disagree, I think you have to hang on or get a little more meat on the bone because it does add to the drama instead of just pop, pop, pop, pop, sh-sh, shot, shot. And then, you know, where's the, what's the story here? Who's hot? Who's not? And sometimes you can tell how a guy's playing just by looking at him long.

And I think there's value here. Oh, without a doubt. And as you get down to Sunday afternoon, and there's less golfers on the course, and there's less players relevant to the story, I think that's beyond important to kind of emphasize those points and what not. But, you know, if there's action in the drama happening, like for instance, this year at the Masters where Speed is, you know, going at 13 and 2 and they're in

commercial break and they come back for three minutes and don't show it, I think you're kind of doing the viewer a disservice in that regard. But that's a different conversation. Well, I don't think we're, I don't think, well, yeah, I guess. And I don't, you're, you know, I don't know that we're even saying something where we disagree. I just think we're never trying to, and I'm not saying others are. I don't know how anybody else's truck works.

I don't even know how our truck works. But we're never trying to fool anyone. You know, if something is a moment ago, you know, it's kind of funny that you think of Jim Nance, you know, part of what he says, you know, a moment ago, you know, it's, that's always there and it's like, I can't even come up with anything different.

I mean, earlier or a little while ago, or you know, back when we were in commercial. I don't know what it is, but we all kind of say it, and we're all being honest on when something happened. And I feel like sometimes, you know, we play to the critics a little too much too. I think, you know, I do think there's the ability, you have to have the ability, this is a TV event.

And for us, you're trying to get ratings and trying to get people talking about it, that you have to have a little bit more of the meat on the bone. But I get it from both sides. I think we're definitely in more agreement there than we are discreement. But we had, we had Zinger on in the last month and he told me something I found really interesting when he was talking about his original ESPN days and his camaraderie with FALDO and how people seemed to like it right off the bat. And something Jim Nance told him was, like, you're good to go now.

Like once they like you, they've written about you and they've said good things. And once they do that, they never want to be wrong. They're not going to change their opinion on it. Obviously, with the criticism that came from 2015, did you feel like that people have been kind of responsive and showing praise for your guys' improvements or do you guys still feel like people aren't quite fully noticing what you guys are capable of doing when it comes to covering golf? Yeah, I think there's some of that, but I think there's some of the, you know, I don't think they're really given us credit for what we're doing, but again, I mean, I don't think they're really giving us credit for what we're doing.

But again, I don't know who you're... I think you're always going to be dissatisfied if you're just constantly looking for praise, and especially in this world. And we're always going to be kind of the Johnny Cum LaTley group that dips in and does a major championship as opposed to the people that are watching every week. As you said earlier, it's a very niche audience and a very kind of exclusionary, how dare you try to cover golf, you bastards at Fox.

We want it with the typical people that do it. And to some people will never be good enough. Right. I would suggest that maybe most people watching on TV really don't care who's doing it. I could be wrong, but golf just feels different than the other sports. And that's good for me personally, because it's made me work really hard to try to learn as much as I can,

do more work than I've ever done. And, you know, when you do enough work and you can kind of chuck it when you get there on Thursday and just watch the golf, that's a really good feeling. And I feel like I'm kind of getting there. And hopefully that's the case, but as you said earlier, there's some people out there. It doesn't matter if I lay down in a puddle at Shinnecock and let people walk on my back

to not get their shoes dirty, they're going to say, well, why do you do it face down? You should have done it face down? You should have done it face up. And it doesn't matter what I do. So if you're looking for praise from people that aren't really going to give it, it's kind of beating your head against the wall. It doesn't really serve a purpose. Yeah.

Did adding golf to your schedule completely mess up kind of the schedule of your personal life was other work kind of taken off your back in that regard or kind of how much is this thrown a loop into your work life balance I guess. It's taken me out of a lot of baseball, which is, you know, I guess I've done it long enough. I've done it since I was 19 in AAA and I'm 49 now, so I've done it for 30 years. I can kind of pick up and do it. The hard thing is just trying to stay relevant and up to date when you don't do a ton of baseball. But I love being around the golf.

I love walking to work and going by a driving range or taking a golf cart out and being in a place like Shinnecock or Oakmont or anywhere that we have on this incredible tour. We're going to go to Pebble Beach for God's sake at the end of the year for the U.S. Amateur. I mean, I really were back to work and go to Utah or at Pebble Beach. To me, that is on par with anything I've ever done in my life. To get paid, to go sit there and follow golf is a thrill. It's taken a lot of my actual golf playing away. Now, my wife and I, we just had twins five weeks ago. So my golf game, my handicap has never been lower and my game has never been worse. So that's a bad combination.

That's a combination to lose a lot of money on the golf course when you do play. What is your game like? What is your handicap and what's your game like? I think it's gently resting at a 1.5 and that's up from a year ago. I just don't play enough to turn in enough bad scores to get my handicap back up to where it probably should be. So I'm obsessed with the game. I can't get enough. My wife laughs at me because anywhere we're going and we're walking, you know, I'm panimiming

my back swing or I'm looking at where my hands are and I've had more golf lessons than a Ricky Fowler at this point in my life. And I just, I can't get enough and I dream about it. My own golf game, it presents everything that I love in life. And it's my one getaway. You know, being with my friends at the end of the day, having a beer, playing golf, there's just nothing like that. And so I'm kind of nuts about the game and I just don't get to play it enough now. How many strokes do you take off bacon when you guys play? You ask bacon. I tend to play well around old Shane. I've had some good rounds in front of Shane Bacon's eyes and I'm pleased

about that. I've actually played good with all these guys. So at least I have some credibility with facts who is, you know, the best putter I've ever seen and makes stuff around the green look so easy or asinger knows that I can play a little bit, at least for that in the hack world. So that's good. You could be new to the game on TV, but at least they know that I care enough to be to try to be good at the game as a player. And that's a good thing.

What's the best golf experience you've ever had? Well, I've had a couple of funny ones. I think getting on at Pebble on 18 in, I think it was 0-4 possibly. I don't know what year it was, but they followed. I was playing with Jay Delsing, and they followed me for some reason at the end of my round on Thursday. It was on USA Network and I got on 18 and 2 at Pebble on TV, which, and made birdie with almost gagged and made par after getting on in two. But that at least physically is the greatest feat

I've ever accomplished in my life. And then playing at Augusta with Aikman and his buddy and we played not long before the Masters. This is about, I don't know, seven or eight years ago. And we were playing from the actual pro-te proteins and I think it was three over at nine and it started to rain and our host to shall remain nameless said, well, I've had about enough of this rain. Let's get some soup. And that was the end of the day. And I didn't get to go to Amen corner playing maybe the best round of golf in my life. So it was

kind of the antithesis of Caddy Shack and the bishop getting struck by lightning. All right, just a few more. We'll let you get out of here, taking a blow at your time. But I wanted to kind of know about preparing as well for the lesser known events, not just the men's US open, is it,

do you find those easier because there's maybe less people watching them, but the names are less familiar, or what is kind of, how do you prepare for those kind of events? I don't ever fall in the trap of worrying about how many people are watching because if one person is watching and I don't know who somebody is or I screw something up which I've done a million times, it's as bad, maybe even worse because you feel lazy.

So, doing the reading, talking to people on the range, you know, sitting with somebody like Julie Angster and peppering her with questions before we do a women's opener. You know, once you do the amateur, that's kind of as close to grip it and rip it as you can go, because you just have no idea who's going to be there on the weekend, it's match play. You've got all day to look up anything you want about these kids. And that's, that, that to me is about as pure as we can have it. When we covered the for ball, you know, people say, what's the most favorite events you've covered? Obviously, the US Open, there's nothing like it. But to me, the amateur is, is right there with it because it's just good fun match play golf, which I love. And then the four ball was unbelievable because it's like televising what you see at a golf course any Saturday or Sunday.

And it's just good golf. And you're kind of following a shot by shot. And you're not really hopping around to a million different shots and a million different players on 18 different holes. It just kind of takes the pressure off that way. What are some of your other personal interests outside of golf or outside of sports? Well, I mean, I love to read. I don't read as much as I would like to.

I find myself by the end of the day now with 49 year old with twins. And then one daughter just got out of college. One daughter is just going into college. And then with what I have to read for work, sorry, my voice is cracked, what I have to read for work, there's not a lot of time to, you know, kind of recreationally read, but learning about history, reading, I'm reading a great book about Truman called the accidental president. It's just diving into kind of the world that my dad lived in and seeing the inner workings of how government was back then, how foreign relations were, or really handled back then, and all that landed on Truman's desk.

I mean, when you think about covering golf or baseball or critics online or whatever it may be, and you've got a guy like Truman who just kind of found himself as president in one of the most pivotal times in US history. You realize your problems, your worries, and what you're really deciding between is rather insignificant. Interesting. All right, last one. What can we expect from the Fox team in 2018 this coming week at Shinnokok that we maybe haven't seen before?

Well, you've never seen in everybody's bio when Their name comes up graphically it will have their wife's name or their girlfriend's name that we can pop up with the actual tour players name request by you beyond that that's a request by me. I just want to read it. I don't want to have to find it out. I don't care if you could see my tech chain with Brooks Keppka after that. It would be really a funny thing to be

old, but we'll leave that alone. So I think the main thing is that it's going to be simplified even more. Like I said earlier, it's asinger in me in 18, it's your boy Bacon and Faxon in the studio tower. They've got eight holes. We've got ten and it's kind of, you know, on the course, I think we're going to use the hell out of Curtis Strange and Steve Flesh and Ken Brown and whoever else is down there, they're going to have a bigger voice and I think Shane and I as the hosts are going to set up the shot and get out of the way. That's kind of the way we're going into this. We're going to

pare it down, simplify, give you great visuals, great shots, great history from a club that dates back to the late 1800s and let you enjoy it. And that's how I would want to watch it if I were sitting on my couch or better yet laying on my couch. And that's how we really want to present it. That's been my desire since day 1, but I think that we're finally kind of rounding into that, maybe because the host, the person you're talking to right now is starting to figure out how to actually do golf. Well, I can speak for all of us here.

We're excited for this coming week, and I wish you guys the best of luck. So thanks, let's get back to the orientation, took a couple of out of your time, but thanks for spending it with us, and looking forward to see what you guys have in store this coming week. Alright, me too. I can't wait to see what bells and whistles we bring and hopefully we're celebrating you know some incredible story come the end of

Sunday. Looking forward to it. Thanks for the time Joe. Appreciate it. Alright, thank you. Cheers. did it. Alright, thank you. Cheers. Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Better than most.