The modern-day golf broadcast features more technology than ever. Shot tracer, putting cones that show the line at top speed or at dying speed, every stat you could possibly think of, other things I can’t think of off the top of my head, etc. As CBS found out on Saturday during the early portion of its PGA Championship coverage, sometimes less is more.
RELATED: Watch Daniel Berger get one of the worst breaks of all time at the PGA Championship
Justin Rose was among the first few groups to tee off in CBS coverage window, wearing a pretty whacky shirt that golf fans watching made plenty of jokes about on Twitter. But somehow, what they saw as he ripped his opening tee shot was much worse: Aerial Shot Tracing, CBS’ latest and greatest technological advancement, though that’s not how the viewers described it.
CBS tweeted out the first video of the Aerial Tracing, and the first thing you notice is that the camera view of Rose shrinks to a point where you almost can’t see him on your TV screen, kind of like “picture in picture,” which was huge back in like … 2002. On the big screen was a view of the line of Rose’s ball flight and where it was going to land:
Obviously, CBS felt quite good about this, good enough to roll it out in for their second major broadcast of the season. The fans were another story, and the Twitter replies began to roll in at warp speed. A sampling of some of the funnier (and harsher) ones are below:
https://twitter.com/kylecalloway20/status/1129830205068140549
https://twitter.com/fantasygolfpod/status/1129817806340538370
https://twitter.com/ChoppingBlockch/status/1129829580733333505
https://twitter.com/tom_bombadil12/status/1129829908950200320
At least Aerial Tracing did make one guy happy:
https://twitter.com/CJ_Allard_CCU/status/1129815076641353729
Just kidding.
Unfortunately, for CBS’ poor social media manager, there are plenty more where that came from. Normally, you could chalk this up to folks on social media just finding something to complain about, a daily occurrence, but I think they have a point here. If you spend enough time on Golf Twitter, you know fans really only ask for a few things: show a ton of golf shots from a ton of players (actual shots, not tap-in putts), and use pro tracer as much as possible. It’s a very simple formula.
RELATED: Follow our PGA Championship live blog