Tiger Woods, Fox Sports golf coverage: Not ready for prime time - SB Nation

Tiger Woods’ latest ‘worst ever’ round was as difficult to watch as Fox Sports' telecast of the U.S. Open.

All Tiger Woods could do, at the end of another awful round of golf in a season full of them -- this time in the opening round of the U.S. Open chamber of horrors at Chambers Bay -- was engage in a bit of gallows humor.

"At least I kicked Rickie’s butt," quipped the 14-time major champion, who won his last grand slam event seven years ago at the U.S. Open.

In a season of "worst evers" the 80 (15 shots back of co-leaders Henrik Stenson and Dustin Johnson) was Woods’ worst score at a U.S. Open. But, as the struggling former ace remarked after his late-afternoon round was beamed nationwide during prime TV viewing hours, he was at least a stroke better than one of his playing partners.

Rickie Fowler, whose Players Championship win last month seemed eons ago, scraped in with an 81 -- two shots better than club pro Rich Berberian Jr., who pulled up the rear after day one. The third member of the trio, Louis Oosthuizen, fared only a bit better, as he signed for a 77.

For Tiger, on a day when Fox Sports debuted its Johnny Miller-free broadcast of the U.S. Open, experienced as many teeth-gritting technical difficulties as did the fledgling golf network. But Tiger ended his first competitive foray on the links-style track outside Tacoma, Wash., in far worse shape than Joe Buck, Greg Norman and the rest of the broadcast team.

Chances are that Fox will work out the bugs, like the head-scratching lack of graphics denoting players names and scores -- a basic element of all sports coverage in 2015.

Over-produced and ill-timed canned features and talking heads yakking as marquee players were making moves on the course were irritating.

And Fox, after promising all sorts of whiz-bang technological innovations, even lost its digital leaderboard -- a snafu Buck blamed on someone pulling the plug.

As Fox irons out the kinks, the question remains -- as it has for months, with Woods carding a career-worst 82 in Phoenix and topping it with an 85 at the Memorial -- whether Tiger can do the same. His opening bogey, after surprisingly striping a drive down the middle, set the pace for what was to come, and it wasn’t pretty.

Things went downhill from there.

When he was done hacking and chopping his way out of ball-gobbling fescue and continent-sized bunkers, Woods carded one birdie, eight bogeys, and a triple. The end, which came after Tiger blasted a drive on the 18th hole and then grounded into a bunker that no one really knew was there after topping a 3-wood, was the perfect summation of the state of Woods’ game.

By the time Woods finally stumbled in, his round resembled a train wreck that had Tiger watchers unable to turn away or find ways to describe just how horrific it was.

The 1993 PGA champion, Paul Azinger, said simply and best what many believe about the 195th-ranked player in the world who’s in the midst of his umpteenth swing change.

We’ll see on Friday, starting at 11:28 a.m. ET, whether the winner of 79 PGA Tour events and the once sure bet to overtake Jack Nicklaus on the all-time majors list can begin to dig his way out the hole he’s dug for himself.

★★★

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