Getting Our Majors All in a Row

We are now inside the thick of fundamental season, so it is probably right for us to get a manage on who is playing where... And perhaps whether or not we must even care. (More in this in a moment.)

First, the calendar, starting with this week. We have five majors in a row:

• July 11-14: CHAMPIONS, US Senior Open
• July 18-21: PGA, Open Championship
• July 25-28: CHAMPIONS, Senior Open Championship
• Aug 1-4: LPGA, RICOH Women's British Open
• Aug 8-11: PGA, PGA Championship

This isn't all of the majors. The LPGA still has their new Evian Championship in September, but that's a ways off yet.

You should additionally be conscious that the PGA can have the RBC Canadian Open the equal week as the Senior Open Championship (Champions), and the WGC-Bridgestone can be the identical week as the RICOH (LPGA). Overlaps like this aren't unusual, however it enables to be privy to them in case you need to observe both tournaments.

I raised the query of whether we should even care about all of these majors. It's no longer due to the fact we've got so many of them now -- 14 in overall for the 3 excursions. In fact these 5 tournaments are all "principal" majors, in that they're in no way the ones people query. We've got one US Open, one PGA Championship, and 3 British Opens (and because they may be all performed in England and Scotland this year, for now I wager it is proper to call them British Opens).

But do you realize that the Senior British Open is not presently indexed as being broadcast by means of ANY network? Not even GC? The conventional networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) are not wearing as plenty of the majors as they used to:

• NBC will share the US Senior Open with ESPN2 this week.
• CBS will share the PGA Championship with TNT in August.

But get a load of this:

• ESPN will carry the Open Championship (PGA) alone.
• ESPN2 will carry the RICOH (LPGA) alone.
• And NOBODY will carry any of the Senior Open (CHAMPIONS).

Are the networks losing interest in the majors? I think it's a valid question... and ESPN may be the big winner here. Over the last few years they've been rushing in to fill the void left as the "Big 3" networks have lessened their coverage.

Granted, the women have always gotten short shrift in coverage, but the big networks still wanted at the least some of their principal insurance. ESPN2 is going to hit the lottery this year; with Inbee Park gunning for 4 in a row, they may be likely going to score large inside the rankings that week.

Likewise, ESPN's solo insurance of the "teen's" Open Championship may want to grow to be a big score as properly. Muirfield should carry a lot of popular players to the leading edge.

But is everybody losing interest in the Champions Tour, even with Freddie and Tom leading the pack? That's probably a worrisome development for the Tour. And with the PGA Tour expanding their season to fill every spare minute they can find, somebody's got to lose out. In fact, the Tour had virtually NO info up about the US Senior Open when I checked Tuesday night -- just a power ranking for the top 5 players. No course info, no leaderboard... if you wanted info, you were out of luck.

Of direction, this will be part of the plan for the huge boys. Did you be aware that Wimbledon changed into carried completely via ESPN and ESPN2 this 12 months? No more "breakfast at Wimbledon" for NBC!

So the query remains. Should we care?

I can't answer that yet... but I suspect it's going to be answered for us over the next few years. Indications are that the networks are moving most of their sports coverage -- beyond NFL football and Stanley Cup hockey, that is -- to their various cable channels. ESPN, ESPN2, and TNT seem to be stepping into the breach for now. I'd keep an eye on them.

If you care, this is.