There’s a fair chance Manchester United’s Rory McIlroy will forever regret his decision to hare around a football pitch last weekend like a slightly less relaxed Roy Keane. Bang went that ankle ligament and with it the chance, at the peak of his powers, to join that illustrious roll-call of stars to win an Open at the home of golf. Jones, Snead, Nicklaus, Faldo, Seve, Tiger and Rory had such a lovely rhythm to it. Ah well, never mind, Jordan’s got the same number of syllables. 2020 maybe.
Silver linings, though. At least poor Rory will have the chance to put that injured foot up, hunker down and devour every single minute of the BBC coverage. We’d all do well to follow his lead, too, because with Sky taking charge in 2017, and the BBC reportedly looking to offload its rights a season early, this week could potentially mark the corporation’s last-ever live Open. Whatever transpires, there’s a whiff of fin de siècle in the air.
The BBC has been covering the Open since 1955. That’s 60 championships, and an awful lot of iconic action, though choice commentary quotes are noticeably thin on the ground.
There’s Henry Longhurst grandly announcing Tony Jacklin’s historic tap-in at Lytham in 1969 as “the shortest putt that ever won an Open”, and his anguished “oh Lord … there but for the grace of God” when Doug Sanders yipped his dreams away a year later.
How about Peter Alliss cooing at the “animalistic” power of Jack Nicklaus at Turnberry in 1977, or being quite a bit more sympathetic than received wisdom suggests when melting down in tandem with Jean van de Velde, art imitating life, at the denouement of the 1999 Open? (“Now what to do, what to do? He’s out with a driver! I’m not sure this is right … This is so so so so sad. And so unnecessary! Oh Jean, Jean … No Jean, please! … Would somebody go and stop him? … Give him a large brandy and mop him down … Please give him one good putt. Please.”)
But action-specific soundbites have never really been the point. The programmes fill the period between the sun rising and the gloaming, with not a single message from sponsors in between. That’s an awful lot of airtime. And an awful lot of airtime requires an awful lot of extemporised patter, because even with a field of 156 swingers in town, there’s only so much action out on the links at any given moment. “Ah, the crow,” Alliss once mused, as a bored camera tracked the little fellow bravely hopping across a fairway as the world’s best players whistled balls close to its beak. “I wonder what’s in store for him this winter?”
Winged beasties – jackdaws, sparrows, passing fighter jets from RAF Lossiemouth – have provided a rich source of material for Alliss’s existential whimsy. As has the equally organic matter of men’s grooming. Commenting on Lucas Glover’s Brian Wilson-circa-Holland phase, Alliss noted that “facial hair is becoming very popular now. I’ve no idea why, I suppose it’s the fashion. But I was brought up when you always went to work with a shave and clean shoes.” He also claimed that designer stubble was first worn in the 1990s by Graham Gooch, refusing to backtrack when spaghetti-western-era Clint Eastwood was cited by way of counter-claim. “His were a bit more wispy,” harrumphed Alliss. “I still blame Gooch for this one.”
This gentle brand of jazz experimentation, admittedly more Acker Bilk than John Coltrane, has long fallen out of fashion. Mark James took a brief excursion into Alliss territory during the last Open to be held on the Old Course. Noting John Daly’s bold attire, James opined that “if you get enough colours in your trousers, your hat is bound to match”. A statement that reveals a new philosophical layer every time you consider it. But there are few other signs that the younger generation have been taking notes. A shame. Alliss will be missed when he’s gone.
A Beeb-free Open might take some getting used to as well. This is not to knock Sky’s golf coverage, which is uniformly excellent. But the mere presence of advertising breaks – pared back to the bare minimum or not – fatally compromises the concept of dead-air time, immediately rendering any riffing self-conscious and forced, ruining the genteel pace of the day, events no longer unfolding in their own sweet time. Whither the crow now? What’s in store for him in 2017?
To be fair to Sky, it did transmit one of the more memorable golf-nature mash-ups of recent years. Croc versus Snake at the 2012 PGA was a graphic, bloody rout that ended with Croc smiling happily in the water, as full and smug as a club captain after a basket of scampi and six gins. A shaken Butch Harmon was moved to admit that he didn’t like snakes because “I don’t like things that don’t have shoulders”, a critique you suspect Alliss would envy. But only time will tell whether this episode will prove to be the exception or the rule.
For now we’ve still got at least four, maybe eight, days left of Alliss and the BBC, live and natural, at the Open. Let’s appreciate every single one, while we can.
