If you have had the misfortune to be sucked in by the promotion on The Golf Channel, you may have actually tuned in to watch their morning golf/sports talk program, "Morning Drive." You may have actually watched, as I did, for a few minutes, because you and I have been starved for golf in the last month, and Golf Channel (they dropped the "The" from their monker) has been showing us nothing but reruns of The Big Break and Tin Cup and an endless procession of infomercials. So, we tuned in to The Morning Drive fully expecting a golf oriented program comparable to "Pardon the Interruption", or something along those lines.
Big disappointment. The hosts of the program, Eric and Gary, talk with one another with all the comfort and candor of strangers sitting together in a church pew:
Eric: Pass me that hymn book.
Gary: I have no opinion on that matter.
Eric is the alpha dog of this program, trying to probe and lead Gary into saying something (anything!) that might be construed as interesting or engaging or thought-provoking or sign of intelligent life. To no avail. On the second day of the program, Eric tried to enlist Gary's opinion on the Top Ten Sports Stories of the Year, as decided by the Associated Press. Gary, unfortunately, didn't have any. "That story doesn't excite me" he would say, or, "It doesn't sound to me as though it should be a Top Ten story." In short, Eric is like an adult trying to gather information from a surly teenager--none is forthcoming.
Of course, the powers that be at Golf Channel may have instructed Gary and Eric to avoid controversy at all costs. To be on the safe side, they say nothing at all. For two hours.
Now, I should give the show a bit of a break. Maybe it will improve. One viewer wrote that "this show will have to improve drastically just to suck". Another said that Gary Williams has "the personality of an unemployed golf pro plagued by the shanks."
But hoping that TGC will institute changes and improvements is, by and large, a wasted effort, otherwise how in the world can you explain Kelly Tilghman? Or, for that matter, Charley Rymer?
To use an old joke, both Eric Koselias and Garry Williams have a face for radio. They do have some eye-candy, but she is largely left off-screen. (Where is the wisdom in that? Presumably she was hired because she DOES look good.) Eric reminds me of a guy who has to shave 3 or 4 times a day, and probaby wears too much after-shave. Gary slightly resembles "E" on Entourage, if "E" did all his shopping at L.L. Bean.
To liven things up, The Morning Drive has interviews with golf personalities. On the first day, they had a telephone interview with Arnold Palmer. Arnie, bless his heart, told Eric and Gary and that it "was good to be King", although not in so many words. On another day, they were talking to Rich Lerner (another Golf Channel employee) on the phone and somehow or another the topic of the homeless guy whose video went viral because of his beautiful radio voice came up. Lerner gave us a couple of dead-on impersonations of Vin Scully and Keith Jackson, but other than that, could tell us little about the upcoming tournament in Hawaii, other than it was beautiful, and that Mauii was an island in the middle of the ocean.
They had a couple of in-studio guests the first week: Michael Whan, the commisioner of the LPGA tour, and Christina Kim, an LPGA player/author/twitterer and ebullient personality. They were both shown playing a "Golden Tees" pinball game when Eric told us that they would join us after the break. During the break, we were told that in this season of over-indulgence it was a good idea to buy a new Lexus. When we came back, Eric asked Kim about her TV viewing habits, particularly her penchant for reality TV programs. Regretably, Kim didn't give us her take on Snookie and the rest of the cast of "Jersey Shore". Michael Whan told us that he was trying hard.
If only the Golf Channel tried as hard.
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