Don't Touch That Dial. I'm Watching The Masters

I’m old enough to remember when there were basically three channels and the Masters only showed the back nine on Sunday.

Now there are a bazillion channels; we can see all eighteen holes at Augusta National (the front holes were first shown in 1997); and I have half a dozen different ways to watch. For my part I likely will watch most of it using various apps on my iPad.

I am not convinced we are better off.

I’d make a joke about “Don’t touch that dial” but nothing has a dial anymore. A dial, kiddos, was a round thing on a tv that you rotated to tune the device to receive a channel on the proper frequency.

Sometimes there were two dials (if you were rich and fancy and had a color tv). One was UHF for channels 2 to 13; the other was VHF, for channels 14 to 82. The vast majority of those were just static. In my major metropolitan area (Washington, DC) we could receive channels 4 (NBC), 5 (independent), 7 (ABC) and 9 (CBS). On the VHF dial, you could get 20 (independent) and 26 (PBS).

That was it. It was all on a tight schedule, and if you missed the beginning of a show, that was it. You missed it. Consulting the daily tv guide in newspapers was important.

TV went off the air completely in the middle of the night, with stations playing the Star-Spangled Banner behind an image of a waving flag. Then it was the color bars.

This year, Masters coverage began on Monday, with the first of sixty hours of Live At The Masters on Golf Channel. The par three contest was broadcast on Wednesday. Competition rounds are on Prime Video, ESPN, Paramount +, CBS and The Masters App.

That’s as many channels showing The Masters than we had total channels when I was a kid.

The Masters app is a technological wonder. It has a scoreboard like every other tournament, but that’s where the similarities stop. On the Masters App, one can watch the regular broadcast; follow featured groups; watch as groups pass through holes 4, 5, 6, 15 and 15; keep track of all the shots on Amen Corner; and even watch the range, for heaven’s sake.

In the coverage of featured groups and hole segments, the app mirrors what I think are the two best ways to watch a golf tournament in person: 1) pick a group and follow it from the first tee to the eighteenth group. and 2) pick a spot on the course and watch every player as they come through.

At tournaments, I usually go with plan one. Following a group throughout a round is the opportunity to see a story unfold.

Most amazing about the app is that it lets virtual patrons watch every shot hit by players shortly after the round. I watched every shot hit by Cameron Young in just fifteen minutes.

Watching a round that way — shot followed by shot — is all flow and no ebb. It’s missing suspense and tension. But it is still amazing — especially as an after the round debriefing.

Even as I wonder at the marvels of the new video age, I worry that we are losing touch with important things such as time and space. A round of golf unfolds slowly, in three or more hours over eighteen holes, not in fifteen minutes of disconnected swings. Similarly, life unfolds over decades, not in disconnected moments caught on twenty second Instagram clips. Jumping from dopamine hit to dopamine hit and then clicking to find more dopamine hits strikes me as a terrible way to live.

In golf, many of the most meaningful moments are those between shots. And in life, many of the most meaningful moments are ones not caught on video, to be replayed on demand.