AUGUSTA — Drones and soccer helmets with the Masters Event emblem? What on this planet of Jim Nantz is happening at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership?
For many years, the Masters tv broadcast has been one of the crucial carefully monitored – and watched – reveals of the 12 months.
Adjustments to the telecast have been sluggish to return. Whereas different golf broadcasts featured overhead pictures from a blimp, roving reporters and different improvements, the Masters was recognized for its traditional, elegant look. With the great thing about Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership as its backdrop, it didn’t want any gimmicks.
However tv viewers who’ve watched ESPN’s protection this week, and plan to tune in for the ultimate two rounds this weekend on CBS, are in for a deal with. Particularly, drones and ESPN’s “Faculty GameDay.”
“That is going to be a Masters in contrast to another,” CBS Sports activities Chairman Sean McManus stated throughout a convention name earlier this week. “The course goes to look completely different. It’s going to really feel completely different. And there are going to be no patrons, so it provides us a chance perhaps for some new and completely different digicam angles. We’re enthusiastic about that.”
Sofa potatoes can have a full day of protection from Augusta Nationwide on Saturday. ESPN will present the conclusion of the second spherical Saturday morning starting at 7:30 a.m., and ESPN2 will carry its school soccer preview present that’s being broadcast dwell from the Par 3 Course at Augusta Nationwide. The faculty present will transfer to ESPN when the second spherical is over.
“It will present extra pleasure for faculty soccer and golf followers alike, and it affords us a novel alternative to reveal our sport to an viewers that could be seeing the Masters for the very first time,” Augusta Nationwide and Masters Chairman Fred Ridley stated.
CBS will broadcast the third spherical Saturday afternoon and Sunday’s closing spherical, which is scheduled to complete sooner than regular to accommodate the community’s NFL contract. CBS started televising the Masters in 1956 and is now in its sixty fifth 12 months of broadcasting the occasion, which is the longest-running sporting occasion broadcast on one community.
CBS golf host Jim Nantz, who’s in his thirty fifth 12 months calling the Masters, was amongst these impressed with the early drone footage.
“It feels completely different for a large number of causes,” Nantz stated of the autumn date on CBS This Morning. “But it surely’s nonetheless the Masters.”
Drone footage has already been a spotlight of the primary two rounds proven on ESPN. As a substitute of Augusta Nationwide’s regular palette of pastel colours seen within the spring, viewers are getting a glimpse of the colourful fall hues that line the course.
To make it occur, Masters officers labored carefully with its tv companions to make the overhead footage a actuality.
“Due to our pals at CBS Sports activities, we’ll debut a couple of applied sciences new to Augusta Nationwide, together with a fly cam on the sixteenth gap and two drones offering sweeping aerial views by no means earlier than seen throughout dwell Masters telecasts,” Ridley stated.
Rely defending champion Tiger Woods amongst these shocked by the addition of drones.
“(Thursday) morning I used to be on the placing inexperienced placing and preparing for my spherical, and after they have been introducing Gary (Participant), we have been on the placing inexperienced and we could not hear them,” Woods stated Thursday. “There was a drone flying over the placing inexperienced.”
The “Faculty GameDay” crew will likely be setup alongside Ike’s Pond on the Par 3 Course. Images of the set, with the brief course within the background, characteristic the Masters emblem on helmets.
Augusta Nationwide has lengthy had ties to soccer. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a member, as are NFL legends Lynn Swann and Peyton Manning. Chairman Emeritus Billy Payne performed soccer at Georgia, and the ranks of former school coaches who’ve been members embrace Lou Holtz and the late Frank Broyles.
“Faculty GameDay” is understood for its full of life banter and a star visitor picker. Lee Corso, one of many regulars on the present, usually dons the mascot headgear of his choose for the day’s greatest recreation. Will he predict the winner of the Masters?
“I do not know what Lee Corso goes to do,” ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt stated final week. “I believe it is a cool thought and a cool marriage of, you understand, an uncommon idea of a fall Masters and the chance to deliver an occasion, to deliver that present there.
“So, I am positive they’ll give you one thing,” he stated. “I do not know, I have never requested them, and I expect to find out.”
