How The TV Coverage Got It Wrong In The Early Exchanges Of The Ryder Cup

If you want to irritate the golf viewer then the best way is to not show the golf. We know, roughly speaking, that there will be commercials and we're all very used to the rousing breakaway music as we head to another break but, at times, there's no excuse not to be showing the actual golf.

We've heard so much in recent weeks about Ludvig Aberg; he hasn't even played a Major yet, he was still an amateur less than three months ago and here he is on golf's biggest stage taking on the Americans.

At the 1st hole, playing in the second match out, the 23-year-old hit one shot – an ordinary approach to the front right of the green, from where his partner Viktor Hovland chipped in from the putting surface.

The next we saw of the pairing was Hovland's approach shot to the 2nd green. We missed Aberg's tee shot, like Brian Harman's, and there was literally nothing else happening on the course. We've waited two years to get our eyes on the Ryder Cup, anyone watching in America has either not gone to bed or got up in the early hours, and we were being entertained by a barrage of adverts.

It's all well and good to see players walking along a gantry on their way to the 1st tee but we've already had four days of build-up, there are balls in the air for real and we're all crying out for some action.

If this were The Masters and we could quickly fall back on an online production where every shot played is able to be seen, then there would be less pressure to produce a better TV offering but we don't. 

We're not sure why, in this day and age, but we don't.

Otherwise the commentary, for the Sky Sports viewer in the UK, was spot on. It's all subjective as to what we want from a TV production but Dame Laura Davies has now settled into being a very polished analyst to complement the older guard. They all get on and that comes across, even to the extent of Rich Beem being able to destroy Andrew Coltart for having not played on a Friday or Saturday in a Ryder Cup.

The scoring and stats are neat enough and there's enough on-screen information for most of us to be getting on with. In the years to come we''ll likely look back and think of all the easy wins and camera angles that the TV companies could have made but you only need to look at the Solheim Cup for how ordinary things can be.

The BBC's Iain Carter had this to say about the coverage at Finca Cortesin as the viewers were repeatedly short-changed in Spain.

"On television the coverage lacked the sophistication we now associate with the professional game. There were only a couple of holes with tracer technology and no yardages for shots to greens. Captioning, especially on that frantic final day, was haphazard and inaccurate. When Ciganda settled over that crucial putt, the television screen stated it was to win the Solheim Cup," explained Carter.

"That was wrong, it was to ensure Europe would retain the trophy. Get it right. The players did and both teams deserved a better showcase to the watching world. We move on now to Rome and the Ryder Cup. Better resourced, the men of Europe and the US will surely enjoy golf's grandest stage and the most lavish of coverage."

If we can't get things right in the alternate-shot format, then we can expect to see a paltry amount of the later starters in the singles.

The good news is that we're now into the matches but you would hope that those new to the game were not turned off by the opening exchanges.