Pitch & Putt

SHOW BUSINESS

TELEVISION

If TV ever loses interest in golf, the game may never be the same again. The rich pros will get poorer, start missing their putts, and have to go back to teaching other people. But so far, the trend is the other way, with TV cameras peering over the shoulder or sighting the roll of a green with nearly every pro who ever endorsed a set of woods. This week ABC begins a new series called Challenge Golf. The resident stars are Gary Player and Arnold Palmer, who as a best-ball team will take on various comers in a complicated 13-match series that will eventually chip to bits a $156,000 prize fund. Between strokes, Palmer himself will supply the commentary. Rough, greens, tees and fairways will be strewn with tiny microphones to pick up the ohs and ahs of the gallery, the vicious snarls of players, and the most intimate remarks between master and caddy.

What's Foreign? Next week Shell's Wonderful World of Golf starts a series on NBC pitting American pros against foreign pros on foreign courses. It is so fussily produced that huge camera booms are camouflaged to look like natural vegetation. The host-commentator is Gene Sarazen. In the first match, Gene Littler plays against Scotland's Eric Brown at Gleneagles. Byron Nelson will take on Holland's Gerry de Wit at The Hague. The U.S.'s Dave Ragan will play against the Philippines' Celestino Tugot at Manila's Wack-Wack Golf Club. So it goes for all but one of the eleven matches in the series. In late February Jack Nicklaus plays Sam Snead at Pebble Beach, Calif., and it is difficult to guess what NBC considers foreign--Nicklaus, Snead, or Pebble Beach.

NBC's All-Star Golf series, which started on ABC five years ago, is still slamming away. It is worth about $40.000 in prizes each year, with extra dollops like $10,000 for a hole-in-one (none so far) and $500 for an eagle (22). Since all the matches but one in all three series are already on film, a shrewd gambler might try to get to a cameraman or assistant producer to find out who won. Then all he'd have to do is find a sucker at air time foolish enough to bet.

Better than Periscopes. Television, of course, covers all the major tournaments and many of the money-money-money-but-no-prestige ones, such as the Buick Open ($52,000) and Palm Springs' Golf Classic ($50,000). It has even created some of the latter, threatening to throw the whole golfing profession off its economic balance. In September NBC collected Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer into something called World Series of Golf. Nicklaus had won $15,000 taking the U.S. Open. For becoming TV's champion, he won $50,000.

Who watches all this TV golf? Golfers, mostly. There are 7,000,000 of them in the U.S. now, a jump of 2,000,000 in two years. But old ladies and young men with double hernias like it too. TV covers golf well. Every stroke is adeptly photographed and clearly visible, far more pleasant to pursue with the eyes than by trotting around a course fighting the masses with a cardboard periscope. Advertisers have discovered giddy new meaning in the old term pitch-and-putt.

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