PGA Features

You can't have sombody called Rocco winning the US Open.

I know it didn't finish (at least the 72 holes) until almost 2am - but I wonder how many of us staved off sleep until Tiger's Rocco-wrenching putt tottered into the right side of Torrey Pines' final hole?

Our household did. We've only recently clambered aboard the 21st century, dumped the black-and-white, and bought ourselves a Cinemascope-type telly that must be about 15 feet wide by six deep.

OK, it's a mere 41 inches but what a picture. Bravia something or other. I've convinced myself it's already HD without even subscribing to the service, although the wife is now demanding a house with bigger rooms, or at the very least, knocking down an internal wall.

And the colours! The envy-green of Monty, leaving the battlefield to what he surely still perceives to be his inferiors, as he harrumphed another premature way out of a major; the red mists that descended on Stuart Appleby, whose early putting chimed with all 28-handicappers who, with painful regularity, can do what the feckless Aussie did three times from less than two feet; and the purple clouds of pain that enveloped Woods each time he burst a gut off the tee, threatening to spray any remaining knee stitches and staples in all directions.

And all that on top of the blue air that one or two frustrated players expended after hitting shots raw amateurs wouldn't even consider.

The play-off was spotty for the first 10 holes - at which point Tiger, scarcely world-beating but bravely enduring that knee rehabilitation, was sucking the life from the contest, three ahead of Mediate. But the 45-year-old unshaven one fired three successive birdies, and actually led by one playing the 18th. Could his dream come true? Then, from a fairway bunker, he ground out a par five that was good enough only to set up sudden death - and the inevitable outcome.

It all came, of course, courtesy of Sky Sports, the channel to which the others aspire. One wee technical hitch late on the Sunday night/Monday morning - losing the studio for seven or eight minutes with host David Livingstone, Butch Harmon and Peter Oosterhuis - couldn't veil the otherwise super coverage of one of the greatest finishes to a major in modern times. And that includes the extra round.

We ought to point out that the bulk of the pictures came from host broadcaster, NBC, whose blimp shots of the rugged Pacific coastline were jaw-dropping, but Sky cleverly augmented the US output with pictures of their own, beamed from four American-manned mini-units hired by Sky, scooting around the course, picking up relevant European coverage, and seamlessly sewn into the Sky fabric by veteran sports director, Mike Allen.

There's only one element of NBC you'd really want, as a top-up to the Sky commentary team, and that's Johnny Miller. The 1976 Open champion has long made a name for himself as an outspoken critic of the game and its players (and remember, a critic is someone who says not-so-nice AND nice things), and I'm told, as Rocco walked up the 72nd hole, Miller exclaimed, tongue in cheek "You can't have sombody called Rocco winning the US Open. He looks more like the guy who cleans Tiger's swimming pool!"

Not the kind of observation you'd expect from either Ewan Murray or Bruce Critchley. But both, in their differing styles, have stacks to offer TV golf, whether accompanied by Peter Oosterhuis, renowned for his fastidious research and normally resident in the CBS booth, or the laid-back Claude Harmon Jr., who had no trouble telling us, when Murray was trying to recall who'd won the first Masters, that he "certainly knew who won the 1948 Masters - my dad, Claude Snr."

Critchley continues to be the commentary booth's wordsmith supreme. Not for him the persistent grammatical errors that the otherwise exemplary Murray perpetrates. "And Westwood's chances of winning the US Open looks to have gone at the 13th." And later: "There was worries about the success of this championship." Plus endless "there's" followed by a plural subject.

The nit-picking of a pedant? Yeah...but irritating all the same.

Full marks, though, to Sky's production team, sweating away in the videotape area, plucking little close-up sequences from the general coverage to use as break bumpers (immediately before commercial breaks), not to mention their musical closing montages each night, the last two to the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, and, naturally, Monday Morning by the Mamas and Papas.

All great stuff...can't wait for a return to La Jolla.