Right now, as I’m typing these very words, Jackson Koivun is about 15 feet to my right on a TV mounted to my living room wall, walking towards his ball as he plays the 7th hole at Detroit Golf Club. On both ends of this stream, the volume is jacked up — in my apartment and on the boom mics trailing Koivun at the Rocket Classic. He’s not giving us much, but we’re trying to hear as much as we can, right? That’s the whole point of this special feed, debuting Thursday from the PGA Tour. A broadcast without broadcasters.
The concept is fascinating and one that the Tour clearly said — in its promotional press release sent out Wednesday — that fans were asking for. Which fans exactly, we don’t know. But clearly enough of them that the Tour decided to give it a try. And not just this once. There will be more commentary-free featured-group broadcasts to come, as evidenced by some of the first words muttered on the stream:
“Hi I’m Rickie Fowler and you’re watching PGA Tour LIVE. No announcers, no distractions, just golf. Quiet Please.”
Those last two (clever) words are the name of the broadcast, but also advice to listeners. If you want to hear something interesting, just listen. Everything our microphones pick up will be sent your way.
As a new form of digital storytelling, it seems fitting for these modern times, where everything is on camera, sports rights are immensely valuable, reality TV is king and AI quietly encroaches upon everything. This is made for the streaming age, unadulterated and raw. It is more human than normal broadcasts, given you can hear Keegan Bradley berate himself with “absolutely f—king ridiculous” after he bogeys the 8th. And yet it’s absolutely less human at the same time. In this era where technology threatens to eliminate peripheral jobs everywhere, it certainly says something that golf can largely be communicated by its participants and not the professional talkers relaying info as they watch from PGA Tour Studios nearly a thousand miles away.
Okay, Koivun has finally reached his ball on the 7th. He airmailed his approach into the green, but because he isn’t much of a talker, you don’t really know what he’s thinking. His face shows disbelief. When he finds his ball behind the green, up against a temporary fence, you finally hear him speak.
“I’m going to need a ruling.”
And therein lies one of the trickiest parts of a no-commentary broadcast. This sport needs some explaining! Not a ton of it. Not all the time. Not necessarily from multiple people, and every golf viewer has one or several talkers we’re disinclined towards. But when Koivun is yanking back the mesh that encompasses the fence to reveal what his drop options are, and Keegan Bradley steps in for a closer look, it would be a great time for just a little commentary about what’s happening. The boom mic in this situation doesn’t quite get close enough to capture the interaction, I’ve maxed out the volume and I’m still pressing the button to see if it can go any higher.
While that ruling feels like a one-off, it wasn’t even the only one Koivun, Bradley and Wyndham Clark received during their round together. (That was a good reminder of all the things that happen in a golf tournament for every … single … group, by the way. You’re missing a lot at home!) The commentary-free broadcast is going to catch 95% of it — slightly less, I suppose, given every 25 minutes or so there’s a commercial break — and it makes for a mostly care-free watch. On a Thursday or Friday, it is perfect in my exact scenario, 15 feet away, out of sight and in the background as I work. Kind of like the midday World Cup matches from a month ago. But take that as an example: in a low-scoring game like soccer, the broadcasters do something important with their tone throughout matches, telling you when to whip your attention in their direction, lest you miss something important.
The first Quiet Please broadcast was never going to be flawless, but the Tour should be applauded for experimenting with its product. It hasn’t done a ton of that over the years. The NFL adds slime to its product and casts it on Nickelodeon every once in awhile, and you know what? It’s kinda fun.
Watching Thursday morning does make you wonder what Quiet Please could look like at its peak. While the Tour will want to spread the love around its mix of stars, this will be best served with the chatterboxes. Koivun may not be a big talker, but a struggling Wyndham Clark sure is. He shot one over on a very gettable golf course and sounded exactly as pissed off as you’d guess. He also calls himself ‘Dub’ in the third person when he hits a bad shot, it seems. Partner, same here.
Clark’s caddie is soft spoken, but Bradley’s longtime caddie, Scott Vail, booms by comparison. You get a sense of the extremely verbal role he’s been playing for Bradley for nearly a decade now. How could Bradley do what he does without him? The former duo Joel Dahmen and Geno Bonnalie would have been electric on this broadcast, due in equal parts to their mutually hilarious friendship or the fact that Dahmen loves to self-deprecate. Either way, the real juice for golf fans everywhere is not necessarily when a pro cusses at himself just like we do at the local muni. The real juice is in the conversations between club-carrier and club-hitter as they waffle over what shot to play. The draw 5 or the fade 4. The low 3-wood or the smashed driver. On a firm golf course that actually engages these pro’s creativity, Quiet Please will be incredible. On a soft, scoreable track like Detroit, perhaps less so. Regardless, it needs to deliver on what makes it special. If Koivun is a whisperer, get those boom mics in even closer. I want to hear his whispers.
After all, we hear from these guys plenty from behind the microphone. But press conferences routinely leave much to be desired. Inside the ropes, there’s no holding back. And for us, clearly, there’s so much to learn — plenty of which is masked when broadcasters enter the fray. It becomes a captivating challenge to try and figure out exactly what they’re trying to figure out.
Of course, some of that will be plenty obvious based on who is in that feature group. Thankfully, Koivun and Co. just finished up, clearing the way for an afternoon of two Quiet Please masters: Jordan Spieth and his muse, “Mikey.”
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