NBC has this Tour Championship all covered up in technology, from the comfortable tower off 18 to the Starship Enterprise production compound just off the property to a camera in every pine and on every knoll.
But any golf broadcast worth its Cialis ads still requires FootJoys on the ground.
“It’s Roger Maltbie!” exclaimed a fellow in the gallery Thursday, as the network’s lead on-course reporter sniffed out Rory McIlroy’s ball in the right rough on No. 1.
“Swear to God?” Maltbie answered in mock awe, to a round of laughter.
For 23 years, Maltbie has covered the game from eye level. So long that some of those whose shots he is describing have little idea that he was a five-time winner on the PGA Tour. “I guarantee you there are kids out here who don’t even know I played,” he said.
Maybe earlier his job was a little tougher, when he had to walk a little more and get his own yardages. Now, at 63, he can get from hole to hole on a cart, and spotters supply him with constant data.
Thursday the marquis twosome was McIlroy and Bubba Watson, which commanded Maltbie’s uninterrupted presence. When they both chunked fairway bunker shots on No. 4, Maltbie was close enough to hear the thud. When McIlroy hit a ridiculous 217-yard approach out of a thicket right of the fairway to 14 feet on the next hole, he began waving his hands in disbelief.
For Maltbie is still, after all these years, a fan. “I’m amazed at what the players of today can do. I was amazed what players of my day could do. It’s something to watch,” he said.
For 25 events a year, he puts on the Batman utility belt of transmitters and batteries, dons the headset with the single antenna pointing to the clouds, and describes golf shots. He’s the course whisperer, with one of the most distinctive hushed voices in the business.
“It’s not rocket science,” he said.
There’s a hint of the populist side to him that made Maltbie such a hail-fellow-well-met while he was a player — hey, he once left a winner’s check in a bar after one tournament — and everybody’s buddy as a broadcaster.
All those years have led to an easy familiarity with the galleries. People just want to say hello to Maltbie as he tours the course. They want to interact. Which is fine under most circumstances. Yet for the first time in his career, he had to get security to remove one drunken lout just last week.
“Hey, Roger, remember me? I met you at the Tahoe gig years ago,” said one fan near the first tee. “I talked to you at the bar afterward.”
“Rog, mind if I take a picture with you?” asked another.
The guys in the tower don’t get that treatment. They don’t enjoy the same intimate views of golfing proficiency. They don’t get Tiger Woods chiding them — “Hey, Rog, keep it down,” he once scolded him, light-heartedly, at a President’s Cup.
Just a couple weeks ago, NBC’s golf producer Tommy Roy asked Maltbie if he would like to spend a little more time in a tower, rotate off his beat on the course.
No, thanks, Maltbie answered. He has another year left on his contract with NBC, and the miles are starting to add up. But for however long he continues to work, he has no interest in watching from a distance.
“(On the course) my only responsibility then is to talk about golf, what’s happening in front of me,” he said. “I’m a reporter, it’s what I am, not so much an analyst. And I’m more comfortable doing that.
“If given a choice, I’ll always be on the ground.”
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