THERE is a lot of golf on television if you know where to find it, but there are still vast tracts of the sport which remain unexplored. We get the Ryder Cup, the majors and the USPGA and European Tours, the top level of the game in other words, but
little underneath that.
In decades past, both the BBC and STV have shown some domestic competition – things like the Scottish Boys' Championship at somewhere such as Southerness or Glasgow Gailes, where as they were being interviewed by Arthur Montford the competitors invariably struggled to stand upright as their flares flapped around in a Force Nine. But there has never been consistent coverage of Scottish golf below the elite level.
It's strange really, given the number of people who are out on the course every week. The rough footballing equivalent would be if we were to get the World Cup and the Champions League on TV but little or nothing from the SPL. A furore would ensue.
First shown in 2006, and repeated over the past month or two, The Scottish Golf Show offers an indication of what could be done, with a little imagination and a modest budget, to redress this imbalance. No more than an indication, because it is a magazine format which has no claims to be exhaustive, but it could still prove to be the forerunner of a really good show.
After all, it is a bit daft that, because of TV, many of us know the history and layout of courses such as Augusta better than we do some of Scotland's finest. That will almost certainly remain the case after a half-hour-long episode of The Scottish Golf Show, but a little knowledge is better than none.
Turnberry, this year's venue for the Open Championship, got the lion's share of attention this week. The 1977 Duel In The Sun received an obligatory mention, but the most interesting material came from six decades ago rather than three.
After the Second World War a lot of people thought they would never see the Ailsa Course again. Having been taken over by the RAF and been flattened out to have runways laid, it was unrecognisable. Substantial sums would be required to restore it, and the owners of the course, the British Transport Hotel group, could not do it all on their own.
Eventually, after prolonged lobbying, Frank Hall, the MD of the group, persuaded the government to pay compensation. Without what narrator Iain Anderson called Hall's "dogged persistence", Turnberry would never have recovered to become the hallowed place it is today.
Speaking of Anderson, while he narrates with sonorous relish, his voice is partly responsible for making the programme bear too close a resemblance to a promotional video shot by Visit Scotland and shipped out to rich Americans. The opening titles play a part too: we've tuned in, we know what the show is called, so do we really need to see a man playing golf in a kilt?
Then there is the extended puff for "heligolf''. Did you know that if you have access to a helicopter you can get to remote courses more quickly than is possible by road?
Thought you did. So you don't really need to be reminded of the fact. But then again, some of those Americans may need to know how you could play Shiskine, Machrihanish and maybe even an Irish course in the same day. They'd be so knackered by the end, of course, that there would be little point in the exercise, but at least they'd have the option.
With most of the programme being about Ayrshire, Colin Montgomerie turned up to sing Turnberry's praises. He also offered an interesting psychological snippet when discussing how even the best golfers win no more than a small percentage of the tournaments they enter.
"In this game – and we all know this game's crazy," he said, turning to the camera momentarily with a bewildered look which was meant to let us know just how completely crazy golf can get, "– you have more downs than ups. So it's important to celebrate the ups."
Alas, poor old Monty is doing a bit more of that sort of celebrating these days than he was when the programme was first shown.
The full article contains 727 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
