I watch golf sparingly when it is not a major tournament, but I happened to turn it on this week to see if Graham Delaet could have a good finish. Unfortunately he didn’t have his best performance on Sunday, and even worse, I had to listen to Johnny Miller for a few minutes. I know the announcers do not have easy jobs, and for the most part I can tolerate, or even enjoy the commentary. I also realize that they are supposed to speak their minds and create some controversy at times. What drives me to talk back to the T.V is when someone says something that is very misleading or even completely wrong. This week it was Johnny talking about reading the greens. According to him at Silverado “everything breaks toward San Francisco”, just like in Palm Springs he always says that “everything breaks towards Indigo”. Unless there is some magic that I do not know about, both of these statements are dead wrong at worst, and very misleading at best.
What does effect the way a ball will curve when rolling across a green. There are minor influences, like wind and grain, but the major influence by far is gravity. The ball does not care about where the water or a mountain or a valley is. It cares about the slope on its path from where it sits to the hole! There can be optical illusions caused by the green being on the side of a mountain, but it is not going to curve uphill because of a nearby pond or hill.
I have heard all kinds of misinformation from commentators, from what causes a ball to spin to what a guy is thinking about, to giving wrong information about what is called “gear effect”. So, again, I respect what they do, but it is “viewer beware” if you believe everything they say or recommend.
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