Well…Trevor Immelman scores a big win at Augusta, holding off a few opponents, including one named Tiger Woods, and some crazy wind to score a big win at The Masters this weekend. If you wanna know his stats, you can go here. What I’m gonna blog about right now is my crew. Well…not really MY crew. It’s the CBS crew. However I consider myself to be part of the team, so I’ll say my crew and go from there.
Team Internet
3 years ago, I was asked to come to Augusta and be a part of a small group of technicians to be on a crew to put “Amen Corner” (Holes 11, 12 & 13) on the internet. We don’t have a lot of us. Basically we are a producer, a director (who also directed the Super Bowl a couple of years ago), a technical director, a video-playback operator named Art (he basically runs 4 replay machines by himself. Amazing what this guy can do), an audio guy (Little Kevin Little), a “Super Spotter” named Byron who is the eyes of the whole operation (if he doesn’t know the golfer, then he doesn’t exist) and myself and a CBS coordinator who helps me (because I type using the hunt & peck method). Add the talent (seriously, Bobby Clampett might be one of the nicest guys in television) and a few others who join in along the way, and somehow we manage to get 3 holes of golf on the net for about 40 hours in 4 days.
Bobby & Byron
It’s a long 4 days, and its a lot of hours. Yet somehow we manage through without killing one another. Consider this…CBS employs close to 400 people to broadcast The Masters. We have a compound where we work with over 20 television trucks. It takes miles of cable run all over Augusta National to get this event on television. We have about 15 of those people who work in our truck. We “borrow” the camera guys from the broadcast truck. Once the tournament hits television, we have to use whatever we can (which can lead to some pretty interesting camera work). It’s all amazing how it all comes together, and there are a lot of really amazing people who have made it all work. I am not one of those people. I show up, sit behind my keyboard and type. But there are a lot of personnel who work a lot of long hours to get a golf tournament on the air, especially one as big as The Masters.
TV Trucks en Mass
So where am I going with this? Well…I’m not really sure. All I can say is this…I really enjoyed working with the professionals that I worked with this week. Did I get a little tired? Yep. Did I get frustrated? Yep. But overall, I think it was amazing getting it all done, and I’d like to think people at home who enjoy golf also enjoyed not just the television coverage, but also the internet coverage that we worked so hard to put out there.
Art
As the Producer of CBS Golf put it in the annual “Masters” speech, it is an honor to be a part of the crew that gets to work The Masters every year. And I agree. But really the honor is to be a part of the “team” that does it. I really enjoyed this week. And as tired as I am now, I imagine it will be one of the more fulfilling events I do all year. So to the crew of “Team Internet” I say…way to go guys! We made it another year! It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again next year! (Providing they don’t find someone else who can type faster than me!) 🙂
The Director
A Round World Through Square Glasses 
Glad to hear you had a relatively good time in Augusta. Also glad that it is over.
Posts like this rock . . I love the behind the scenes stuff. Takes me back to the days when I used to tag along to WHIZ! You even let me run the teleprompter once. My only claim to entertainment fame.
Good times.
Pingback: …and then Lee Trevino hit a hole-in-one!!! « A Round World Through Square Glasses